Conquest of the Past
by essaysforbreakfast
Summary: Twenty-five years of prosperity follow the end of the New Holy War, and the Sins are able to live out a life of peace - until they fall at the hands of a man they once trusted. The survivors will stop at nothing to make things undone. - A potential outlook on how the story of the Seven Deadly Sins might continue -
1. Prologue

She ran.

She ran as Ban had told her to, and her steps echoed with an eerie sound whenever her boots hit the empty cobblestone road. Her lungs ached for more oxygen or for a pause, but she didn't stop and willed her body forward instead. She fought to tighten her grip around the hilt of the weapon, her fingers slippery from blood.

Blood that wasn't hers.

Every turn she took revealed another street of Liones' capital, deserted or destroyed down to the foundation stones. No one was around to see her stumble and lose her footing, no one to help her climb back to her feet with quivering muscles; the surviving civilians had long been evacuated, and the Knights of the Round Table didn't show themselves either.

But she knew they were here, in the city, eager to carry out Mordred's every command.

The open square in front of the southern gate was empty when she reached it; Meliodas was nowhere to be seen. With brute force of determination, she sealed the panic away. It would all come to haunt her soon enough.

A sound from her right snatched her attention towards it, and her eyes went wide at the sight of the Colossai closing the short distance between itself and the southern gate, directed by an inaudible instruction. Every step the massive stone creature made was accompanied by a quake of the earth that made her teeth smack against one another. Its featureless head didn't bother to turn towards her. As it stood, she was barely a threat to the creature or to its master's plan. She had already played her part.

Short on time to waste, she silenced her concerns regarding Meliodas, slipped through the tiny door next to the gate, and turned towards the well-hidden trap door that marked the entrance to the passageway out of the city. A passageway she knew all too well, and the first thing her mind had clung onto after Ban had sent her away.

After dropping down into the narrow tunnel, she picked up speed to hurry past the path to her right that would lead her back to Liones' castle. The last place on earth she wanted to return to.

She pushed the surging thoughts and memories aside, but not before the definitive sound of a spear dropping to the cobblestone flashed in her ears. Her chest was cramped. And all she could do was to keep heading forward, through the dark tunnel she had used to play in, in what seemed like ages ago.

And so, she reached the end of the tunnel right when she thought she should, where a tiny beam of light seeped through the ceiling. Her breath unsteady, she lifted the trap door equivalent on this end of the passageway and was endlessly relieved to feel grass beneath her hands, as she heaved herself out of the hole in the ground. The chirping of birds nearly sent her into paralysis with its uplifting tune that stood in such stark contrast to what was happening in Liones. She could still smell the acerbic smoke, the crumbled stone, the metallic taste of blood.

Once she regained control over her muscles and stumbled to her feet, she followed the way through the sparse grove of chestnut trees that had clenched itself into her memory. The round shape of the house came into view quickly thereafter, unmistakable by its pointy rooftop rising above the canopy. It looked too peaceful to be true.

She had yet to reach the steps to the porch when the door swung open, and Lance rushed over with a yell, only to trap her in an embrace.

"Ivy! Heaven, Ivy, are you okay?" he asked. His voice sounded too supportive for her liking.

But she was glad for his arms that prevented her from falling victim to her trembling legs. With sheer force of will, Ivy choked down the necessary minimum of her tenseness and allowed Lance to guide her into the Boar Hat's main room.

Inside, she got assaulted by more questions as Elaine floated closer. Worry clouded her expression. "What happened? Where is Ban?"

Ivy managed to shake her head at the second question. She didn't know, hadn't seen him since he had headed to the castle, his steps controlled by worry and anger. But if he had wanted, he could have caught up with her long ago. If he had ignored the castle, he could have offered explanations to his family.

"Mom, stop it for now," Lance intervened, but his mother ignored him to lock Ivy's gaze with a commanding stare that failed to suppress her fear.

Elaine proceeded with a single word question.

"Harlequin?"

Ivy was frozen in place. The answer to that, she did know. With crushing certainty.

_Ivy, go now! Get to Ban and don't stop! You hear me?_

Elaine had to have seen something in Ivy's gaze, something horrific enough for her to float a few feet back. Maybe the truth.

Lance's grip around Ivy's shoulders tightened as he witnessed his mother's reaction. "It's okay, Ivy. Everything's okay," he said in a low voice, to calm her or himself, Ivy couldn't tell for sure.

And that was when she broke, the grip around her weapon went loose, before she flung her arms around Lance and cried into the shoulder of her cousin without restraint.

Helplessly, he patted her back in an effort to calm her, but the images in her head repeated with no remorse, tortured her until numbness covered her mind. Ivy hadn't seen every horrific act Mordred had done to betray her family, but it was more than enough to get a grasp on the extent of his crimes.

While her tears dried out, Ivy regained enough composure to bring a bit of space between herself and her cousin. Embarrassment formed inside of her at the sight of his green tunic covered with her tears and the blood from her hands. Wasn't she supposed to be the collected one of the two? Didn't she have the responsibility to spare him the sight of her weakness?

Lance's eyes darted sideways as Ivy tried in vain to bring her hair back in order, only for him to glance at her with this terrible, compassionate look that almost sent her over the edge again. Ivy surrendered to the mess of her hair; all determination and strength was used up.

But she had to concentrate on something, _anything_ else, or she would fall victim to the images in her head. So she avoided the scrutiny of Lance's scarlet eyes as far as possible and looked around the room, feeling betrayed by how usual the inn looked. The coarse-constructed wooden tables and chairs, the glass windows, tainted from a lack of recent cleaning, the richly stocked booze shelves behind the counter – all of it bared the illusion of normalcy. As if her parents and siblings had gone to town and would be back any minute.

Her aunt, Elaine, took up position at a corner near the window with the best view at the capital of Liones to wait for a sign from her loved one or any of the other Sins. The afternoon sun painted vivid patterns onto the floor as the light filtered through her Fairy wings. And at the feet of the staircase leading to the upper rooms stood Katrina, her eyes wide in shock as she took in the scene.

Ivy couldn't look at her for more than a few seconds. She had no idea how long Katrina had been standing there, but the thought of breaking down in front of her, for her to witness, was even worse than losing her composure in front of Lance.

As he followed Ivy's line of sight, Lance turned to give Katrina a hardly convincing smile. "Hey, Katrina. Ivy just came back from the capital and –," he started his comfort talk, undoubtedly peppered with soothing lies, but Katrina interrupted before he could present her a coherent excuse for Ivy's breakdown.

"Something happened." It didn't sound like a question.

"We don't exactly know what happened, but our parents will surely tell us when they get back here," Lance said, but his words convinced no one, not even himself.

Katrina shook her head and focused on Ivy with a look that seemed absentminded and all too concentrated at the same time, as if she intended to read right through her thoughts. Ivy at least had the willpower to hide her blood-soaked hand behind her back.

An earthshattering sound suddenly filled the room, a hundred drums to signal the end of the world. All heads snapped towards the window next to Elaine, and beyond the glass, a cocoon of dark, demonic magic rose over the walls of Liones' capital, its sheer presence able to consume every living thing in proximity. But as quickly as it emerged, the darkness disappeared, wiped from the face of this earth.

Fear submerged Katrina's face. A whimper escaped her lips. Her green eyes threatened to drown in a pool of darkness, and Ivy reacted just in time to prevent her from storming out the door.

"DAD!" Katrina cried into Ivy's ears while she struggled against the fierceness of Ivy's grip. Lance tried once more to calm her with words, but received no reaction from Katrina other than more forceful cries for her father.

After a while, Katrina went limp in her arms and Ivy let go of her just enough to seat her at one of the unoccupied tables. The younger girl looked like she had walked through Purgatory and back, and Ivy realized she probably had the same hollowness plastered onto her face.

In need of help, Ivy turned to Elaine, the only adult in the room, but her aunt held the look of the broken, her frail form still curled up next to the window. Lance stood at the center of the room emptyhanded, unsure of what to do with himself or how to even begin to tackle this disaster.

"I suppose that means Escanor and the backup from Camelot didn't make it in time," he said, his voice hollow. "We can wait a few more hours, but then we should leave. We have to assume that Mordred will get here next."

"It's pointless," Ivy said. She needed any ounce of strength left to get her words out.

"What?"

"The waiting part. It's pointless."

Lance looked at her in sincere confusion. "Ivy, we have to give Aura and the others a chance to meet up with us here. You can't give them up like this."

"It's pointless, you hear! Aura, Cynthia –" Ivy heard her voice break, but she couldn't find the courage to continue. Lance had no idea what had happened, what Mordred had done, what he was willing to do to the rest of them.

At a loss for words, Lance stumbled a few feet backwards in an effort to bring physical distance between himself and Ivy's words. Denial made him shake his head, only for his voice of reason to regain the upper hand. Defeated, he sank down into a chair next to Katrina.

"We have to fix this." Ivy raised her head to look at the owner of the voice and was surprised to find Katrina on her feet. Determination spread from her small form. "It doesn't matter what it will cost, but we have to fix this. We can get to Camelot for help."

Ivy couldn't help but huff. "And what plan exactly do you have in mind?" she asked and realized too late how poisonous her tone was. Katrina flinched but remained steadfast.

"I don't have a plan. But that's not the point. We have to do something. Right, Elaine?" Katrina turned towards Elaine, but the latter gave no response other than a continued stare into the middle distance.

Lance, desperate to reach for any lifeline they would throw at him, supported Katrina with a little too much élan. "Camelot is as good a place as any to look for help against Mordred. Mom, we can go to Camelot while you get back home to the Forest and –"

"I'm not letting you go!" Elaine shouted, as Lance's words had reignited a spark of life that the grim reality of the day had buried. "Do you realize what will happen if Mordred gets a hold of you? HE MURDERED THEM! Ban, my brother, Diane, my nephew, my nieces… Helbram and Aura… they were just children. I… I can't read their hearts anymore."

Ivy clenched her hands, eyes fixated on the floor. She had known all this, had felt it with almost absolute certainty.

Blood on the marble tiles. Blood on the ridge of Mordred's sword. Blood on her father's clothes as he stood up one last time.

Almost reluctantly Elaine continued to speak, at first fixated on her son, but then she included Katrina and Ivy with a stern look. "I'm not letting you go, Lance. None of you. Otherwise your parents would end me."

Elaine's words failed to ban the images out of her head, and her pained but determined look failed to make Ivy forget. But she made the necessary steps to close the gap between them and let herself be hugged right after Katrina.

The Seven Deadly Sins were dead.

But they wouldn't give up hope.

* * *

**(A/N) **Thank you for deciding to read this Next Generation fic. This may seem obvious, but this story heavily relies on characters not part of the manga or anime and will include some AU elements. The changes I made are most likely intentional, so please be aware of that when you stumble over aspects in the story that might not 100% fit into canon.

This work was inspired by "Four Riders of the Apocalypse" by Kamije Celeek. Because updates used to be so sporadic on that fic, my mind had too much time filling in the blanks. Basically what happened was, I took the premise, cherry-picked what I liked about the character constellation, filled the holes with my own ideas, spun it around a few times, and build thirty years of in-universe history from there. The characters will be different, but I couldn't bring myself to change Ivy's name - none of the ones I considered fit her character as much.

Because I recently fell into the hole that is Arthurian Legend, there might be some cross-reference to those stories as well.

Please feel free to let me know what you think. So long!

**Edit: **I tweaked the prose a little and purged a few mistakes. Nothing substantial changed.


	2. Southwards

They later only referred to that day as The Fall of Liones.

The day that Mordred, first heir to the throne of Camelot, conquered the capital of Liones, and all efforts of the Seven Deadly Sins to stop him were proven to be futile. The details never became entirely clear to Lance since Ivy refused to discuss her experiences in any way, shape, or form. But he had a pretty concrete picture in his head of what she might have seen – with how disturbed she had been when arriving at the Boar Hat, there were only so many things that could have happened. And for one final piece of evidence, he needed to look no further than his mother's behavior.

A part of Lance held out hope that his father would return to them, beaten up but alive and swearing revenge against Mordred.

It was wishful thinking. His father had lost his immortality when he had brought Elaine back to life all those years ago, during the so-called Holy War. But hope had this nasty habit of sticking with you, even after you've realized how pointless it was.

After a lot of relentless arguing, they managed to push Elaine to go back to the Fairy King's Forest without them. It took a hefty amount of convincing from Lance's part, and even then, his mother didn't budge until he played the guilt card. To say that her brother would have wanted for someone to protect the Fairy Realm straight to her face was an unfair, maybe even cruel move, but at least it did the trick.

If he was being honest with himself, Lance worried about his mother. She had always seemed so fragile, as if one punch, physical or emotional, could send her back to the realm of the dead. And to have lost so much of her family and those she called friends had broken something inside of her, something Lance wasn't sure could be mended with time and supportive words.

He wasn't even going to try to imagine how Ivy and Katrina were feeling after they had lost both their parents with painful certainty.

After departing from his mother, Lance and the two girls headed south in hopes of finding anything of use in Camelot or someone to help them. Merlin was their best bet by far, but they didn't know whether Mordred had dealt with her already, like he had with the other Sins – a scenario Lance deemed damned likely no matter how much he hated to admit it.

But if she was still alive and if they managed to find her, she might know a spell that could turn back time or something similarly far-fetched. Truth be told, Lance was at a loss when it came to magic spells and incantations; he had never gotten the hang of the specifics.

Nighttime had settled in as the trio walked towards the road that was paving its way through Liones' hillsides a couple hundred yards away from the Boar Hat. Ivy lead the way, mostly because she had the best sense of direction out of them. But maybe also because she was the oldest, with a four-month gap to Lance, a fact she was all too proud of and eager to rub in his face. After Ivy followed Katrina, her steps light as usual, while Lance had decided to play rearguard. Not that there was much he could have done if Mordred decided to appear behind them.

While Lance was still occupied with his own thoughts, Katrina turned to him out of the blue, a question on her lips. "We can change things, right? Make all of it undone?"

The fear in her voice made him panic for a second, as he was at a complete loss for words. Maybe? He hoped so. There had to be a way. But none of it sounded convincing enough to calm Katrina, not even close, and Lance knew that all too well.

He hoped she wouldn't snap. That would be a disaster of a whole different proportion.

"Sure, we can! If your parents managed to defeat a three-thousand-year-old curse, then turning back time a few days will be child's play," Lance said while opting for his most optimistic tone.

He seemed to have sounded convincing enough because Katrina granted him a small smile before turning back towards Ivy, who had meanwhile stopped dead in her tracks.

The street in front of them displayed a massacre. The crest of Camelot with its golden Tyrant Dragon was omnipresent, on shields, flags, and pieces of armor. And in between piled the corpses of knights from Camelot, all slain with no indication of survivors. Iron shards the length of Lance's forearm had ploughed through the squat and had penetrated plate armor and chain mail alike. Directly ahead, the southern gates of Liones' capital, that should have been open at the time of their arrival, were closed; without any cover or means to enter the city, the men of Camelot had been an easy target for Mordred's forces to take down. They had been sent to aid the Sins and had paid the price in lives.

Lance wondered whether Escanor was among them. He wasn't eager to find out.

Almost in trance, Katrina stumbled forward, towards the bloodbath, but Ivy got a hold of her wrist in time and held her back. She locked eyes with Lance for a moment.

"We should stay clear of the road for now," Ivy said, her tone dry and exhausted.

Lance nodded and followed a few steps behind as Ivy half led, half dragged Katrina away from the site of death. She had fallen silent, and neither Ivy nor Lance were eager to talk when there was nothing they could have said. A bitter taste lasted on Lance's tongue that he couldn't seem to swallow.

The trio stopped under a nearby birch tree at the side of the road, just far enough that the outer walls of Liones' capital almost disappeared into the dark. On other days, the walkways on top of said walls would have been illuminated by watchfires, but no one had bothered to light them this time. After all, there was little point in keeping out watch for a potential enemy when the enemy was already _inside_ the walls and had long overtaken the city.

Ivy let go of Katrina and fiddled with the bracelet around her right wrist, a nervous habit of hers.

"Speed or discretion?" she asked.

Lance turned the question around his head a few times. He wanted to reach Camelot as fast as possible, but if Mordred or one of his minions would find them on their way there, their journey would have been for nothing. And they would need to take a break sooner rather than later as well, especially Ivy, whose sleep-deprived stare at her bracelet lost focus every few seconds.

"Discretion, for now," Lance said and received an absent nod from Ivy.

They didn't waste any more time and continued their way parallel to the main road. Above them, the moon climbed over the star-filled sky.

The road bent northeast to avoid the wide bay of the river Tribuit and its nasty currents before finally crossing the stream about a mile further inland. Underneath the manmade bridge – a construct of mighty tree-trunks that was a nightmare to cross whenever the ground was slippery from rain or snow – the waters of the Tribuit gurgled at an ever-consistent pace. From this point forward, the road only ever led south until it reached the capital of Camelot. After days' worth of travel that is.

So far, Ivy's steps were steady, but Lance knew her well enough to suspect she wouldn't ask for a pause until she would collapse to the ground. And if he was being honest, he was starting to feel tired too.

"I think that's enough for now. We should sleep for a while," he said and earned himself a grateful smile from Katrina and deathly silence from Ivy. At least she slowed her steps.

Figuring that the small clearing beneath a set of old oaks was as good a place as any to rest, Lance settled himself on the ground, which wasn't exactly cozy but at least dry and close enough to the road to enable them to hear if someone or _something_ approached them.

Katrina curled herself into a tiny ball a few feet away from him and closed her eyes as soon as her head touched the inside of her elbow. Hopefully, she would be able to sleep and not dream of anything that had happened today.

Lance placed the twin swords from his back onto the ground and made sure he could reach for the weapons at the instant he might need them. Then he waited for Ivy to lie down next to him. She had her back towards him, so all he could see of her were her lean shoulders and the honey-colored ponytail she wore to keep her hair in check.

He shot one more glance at Katrina, who was breathing more easily now, before he tried to get Ivy to talk to him.

"I know you don't want to talk about this, I get that. I've been there too, and I don't want to pressure you into anything. But if we're not all on the same page, we'll have more trouble later down the line. So, what happened at the capital? Can we really be sure that none of them made it?"

They were talking about the Seven Deadly Sins damn it; if they didn't hold a candle to Mordred, no one did.

Ivy didn't bother to turn towards him. "You're right. I don't want to talk about it, _Lancelot_."

Angry and annoyed with her behavior, Lance rolled away from Ivy. Yes, technically his name was Lancelot, but no one call him by the full version, except his mother when she was trying extra hard to get a point across. If Ivy used his full name then only as a telltale sign to say that she was not in the mood to deal with him or her memories. But he had seen her cry today, something he hadn't seen her do since she had been six years old, when her dad had been forced to leave the Fairy King's Forest to deal with remnants of the Demon Clan threatening to invade northern Britannia. Whatever sights she had seen, the experience had been horrific enough to cause her to break down in front of him.

In any other situation he could have used this to tease her to no end, and he would have done so with delight.

Lance had been trying to fall asleep for a while and was therefore surprised to hear Ivy's awfully distant voice. "Mordred really tried to kill us. And he succeeded. I only got away because dad stalled him long enough. I just… never thought he'd go that far. Guess that makes me pretty naive, right?"

When Lance turned towards her, she was lying on her back, eyes fixed on the night sky to follow the clouds go by as they blocked out the stars.

"You're not naive. Even our parents were blinded by Mordred and his stupid, for-the-sake-of-peace attitude – otherwise they would have tried to stop him sooner. He just so happens to be a better actor than all of us. He really should've gone for his dream of becoming a travelling jester."

A smile cracked through Ivy's silent staring, a genuine smile that pushed away her worries for a short second. Then it was gone again, but Lance was certain he hadn't imagined the burst of liveliness and the smile hadn't been a trick of the light. Despite the persistence with which his curiosity was nagging at him, he decided to leave the rest unsaid. For now, he would be satisfied with waiting. And getting a dose of sleep.

"Night, Ivy," he murmured after he closed his eyes halfway.

"Night, Lance," she replied, her eyes wide open, as if she wanted to try counting the stars above.

:.:.:

A sound startled Lance and forced him out of the blissful state of sleep. His brain needed only an instant to start sending commands to his muscles, and in one motion, he jumped to his feet, one of his swords in hand. But instead of an attacker, his gaze met Ivy, who regarded his antics with an almost amused smile. Behind her façade, she looked as tired as she had last night.

"Rise and shine," Ivy said, but her tone lacked the necessary humor to invite a snarky remark.

Lance studied their surroundings and, upon realizing that the sun had to have emerged from the horizon at least an hour ago, cursed himself for sleeping so long.

"You could've woken me up, you know?" he said before trying and failing to suppress a yawn.

"It looks like you needed the sleep," Ivy said in her best older sister impression that always made her sound an awful lot like her mother. How he detested that tone of hers, especially when it was targeting him.

"What's for breakfast?" he asked despite knowing full well that they hadn't packed any provisions. Too bad Meliodas' stocks had been so limited when they had left his house – unless one wanted to count the vast selection of liquor of course.

"You care to cook?" Ivy replied in keeping with their game of talking nonsense. "Oh wait, I forgot that you got none of your dad's talent for it."

They grinned at each other before Ivy focused on her bracelet. Lance answered her unspoken question. "I think we can go over to prioritizing speed for today. If you feel strong enough to carry us that is."

Ivy gave him her best death stare. "I feel strong enough to punch you to a bloody pulp."

"_That_ would only detain us."

Lance's healing factor was nowhere close to the level of immortality his father once had, but some of the better assets the Fountain of Youth granted were apparently inheritable. This fabulous detail had often come in handy when he and Ivy had declared war on each other in the past, and she had displayed no desire to hold her punches. To scrape his knees or break his bones still hurt – unfortunately –, but Lance had been grateful for his advanced durability on more than one occasion.

"But it'd really go a long way of cheering me up," Ivy said in halfhearted mockery.

Lance dismissed her comment with a handwave. "You just hurry up already while I take care of waking up the sleeping Demon."

It was supposed to be a joke, but his words rubbed Ivy the wrong way, as she huffed and got to her feet without sparing him another look.

She turned the blue stone embedded into her bracelet counter-clockwise, and numerous bright lights spread from the magical item until Ivy disappeared within them. Despite having seen the works of the spell a few times already, Lance awed as Ivy's frame grew from a mere five foot something to almost thirty feet, clothes and bracelet included. After the lights dispelled, Ivy stood in front of him in her regular Giant form, unable to hide her relief over escaping the limitations of a human sized body, and sent Lance a wide grin.

Out of the four cousins Lance had grown up with, Ivy was the only one who had inherited more traits from her mother's Clan than her father's, which made her the only one with the natural size of a Giant. While she often used her «Shrinking Bracelet» – almost identical to the one her mother owned – to better deal with humans and small-sized members of other clans, Ivy still was in large part a Giant and felt most comfortable in the form she appeared in front of Lance now.

As Ivy began to tap her foot in impatience, Lance grimaced and turned over to Katrina, who was resting in the same curled-up position she had fallen asleep in last night.

Careful not to startle her, Lance leaned over and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Hey, Katrina, are you awake? We have to get up now, or Ivy will eat us for breakfast," Lance whispered into her ear, loud enough for Ivy to hear him and undoubtedly glare at his back with murderous intent.

Katrina stirred under his hand and sat up halfway before opening her eyes. Both of them bared the symbol of the Goddess Clan, a white triskelion in a pool of orange. The day was shaping up to be a great one.

"Morning, Lance," Katrina murmured, still half asleep, while her eyes reverted back to their usual color. As her gaze darted sideways, she flinched in surprise, most likely because Ivy's statue blocked out parts of the sun. Most people, in all fairness, weren't used to waking up next an almost full-sized Giant.

But Katrina caught herself quickly enough that Ivy didn't notice her initial unease.

"Good morning, Ivy. Did you sleep well?" Katrina asked in her most cheerful manner after Lance had pulled her to her feet.

Ivy smiled as a response, which in Lance's eyes was the blatant equivalent of a 'no'. He couldn't claim to be surprised. But Katrina didn't seem to catch the lack of an outspoken answer.

"And yourself?" Ivy asked and leveled the question back against its owner without missing a beat. "No bad dreams?"

"Nothing. No dreams at all," Katrina replied before her expression clouded with the awareness of all the horrors that had happened yesterday, and the reason why she had been sleeping out in the open, a good distance away from her home.

Lance lacked comforting words to spare – at least he found none that would have sounded more than hollow – and occupied himself with sheathing his twin swords behind his back instead. For as accustomed as he had gotten to the weight and balance point of the two thin blades over the past months, he didn't look forward to use them outside of a stake-less training fight. He hated the mere thought of spilled blood that wasn't his own on the steel.

Ivy had meanwhile extended an open palm to hover over the ground for the other two to hop onto. And while Lance was used to getting picked up by a Giant to sit on their shoulder, Katrina stared at Ivy's hand in reluctance.

"It's really no big deal, she won't eat us today," Lance reassured. "You've done this before, right?"

Katrina nodded warily and closed the remaining distance between herself and Ivy's outstretched hand. "But that was years ago. Are you sure you're okay with this?"

"Sure, you're probably more fun to carry around than Lance or Cynthia. All they ever do is complain, you know? It's a miracle they don't get along better," Ivy said with a teasing look at Lance.

He rolled his eyes but had to admit the partial truth in her words. He had never reached the level of familiarity with Ivy's younger sister Cynthia that he had with his other cousins. Probably because she liked to refer to him as a hopeless case of 'unroyal behavior'. There was just about nothing he wouldn't give in exchange for Cynthia's bickering right now.

Lance put that thought to rest and instead watched as Ivy plucked Katrina from the ground and seated her on her right shoulder. He let himself be placed on Ivy's free shoulder right after and relished in the better view and refreshing gusts of wind as they howled past his head. Sometimes he envied Ivy for her natural height advantage.

Beyond the cluster of trees they had used to conceal themselves for the night, the vast hillsides of Britannia stretched as far as the eye could see. The road connecting the kingdoms of Liones and Camelot curved through the land like an inert snake in a grassy sea. If they moved parallel to the brick-build road, they could cross a significant amount of the distance separating them from Camelot today alone.

The same thought seemed to motivate Ivy because after picking up her weapon, that had grown to its normal size alongside her thanks to the reversed effect of the Shrinking Bracelet, she opted for a steady but urgent pace. Her eyes trailed south to where Camelot had to reside amidst the southern plains for out of sight.

Lance had had other thoughts on his mind before, but as he studied the bronze war hammer in Ivy's left hand, he recognized the weapon that belonged to her mother – the Sacred Treasure Gideon. If the right time ever came, he would have to ask Ivy how she had gotten a hold of her mother's Sacred Treasure, but since the answer was related to whatever happened at the capital, Lance would have to contend with keeping his questions to himself for the time being.

Instead, he shifted his gaze to the distance and allowed for silence to surround them, a silence filled with the illusion of peace.

* * *

Katrina greatly enjoyed sitting on Ivy's shoulders and letting herself be carried over waves upon waves of summer grass. She could think of nothing in this world she treasured more than the cool air and harsh winds of the higher levels of the sky, and on the shoulders of a Giant she almost reached these levels. But not quite.

With a sigh, she pushed the memories of flying with her parents aside. Despite usually finding so much joy in them, this time they held a grief Katrina didn't want to be overtaken by. For all she knew, her dad had died while trying to defend the capital of Liones against Mordred. The sudden disappearance of his Purgatory-born magic was proof that he would not come back to her. And her mom had been with him when the Colossai had torn the east gate to the ground and when they had leveled the last line of defense the Sins had set up. Their magical energy had long returned to the magic field spanning all of Britannia.

If only she had pushed for them to stay instead of leaving her in Elaine's care, then they might have still been alive. She missed her dad ruffing her hair until it was as messy as his own, she missed her mother placing a supportive hand on her shoulder, and she missed their unlimited supply of words of encouragement.

If they had still been alive, they wouldn't have wasted a second to move heaven and hell to stop Mordred before he could bring harm to anyone.

Absentmindedly, Katrina twirled around a lock of hair and tried her best to withstand the tears. She didn't want to appear weak in front of Ivy and Lance, who were entangled in a silent conversation of mutual understanding. Despite no words passing between them, a sense of familiarity brimmed between them, a bond forged over years of a shared childhood.

Katrina was incredibly jealous of them. Even though Lance had no siblings of his own and never failed to butt heads with Ivy, he was as close with his cousins as one could be with actual siblings, and Katrina had never experienced this closeness herself. She was and had always been an only child, raised by her parents without the company of same-aged children. She missed this sense of familiarity in her own cousins, Percival and Jennine, for once because they were both older by a critical amount, and also because Jennine liked to act reserved or shy, and their personalities failed to complement each other.

Katrina's best friend was Cynthia, Ivy's younger sister, but they didn't exactly live next door to each other, with Cynthia in the Fairy King's Forest and Katrina close to Liones' capital. So they only got to see each other a couple of times per year, whenever the Fairy King and his family were invited to some sort of festivity or ball held at the capital. Granted, these occasions had been plentiful in the past, but to maintain a close friendship, it needed more than sporadic visits.

She wished for her friend to be here with them, and Katrina couldn't help but wonder if Cynthia was truly gone. From what little Ivy had revealed, she had passed away. But maybe Ivy didn't know for sure or had been tricked to believe she had seen something that had never happened. Katrina knew little about Mordred, but she doubted the young man she had come across a few times was capable of murder.

When she tore herself from her wandering thoughts and focused on the landscape ahead, Katrina found that the view looked almost identical to the grassy hills they had seen when they had set off in the morning. The only change to break up the monotony came in the form of a dark forest hugging a mountain range to the far west. The craggy peaks glistened in the sun. Other than that, the vista was bare of landmarks; no town or remote village nestled between the hillocks. If only she had paid more attention when her mom had last shown her a map of Liones.

"How long do we have to keep going to get to Camelot?" Katrina asked, and hoped not to sound too much like an impatient child.

"Three days maybe?" Ivy answered without breaking her pace. "More if we take breaks during the day as well."

"We better also take breaks during the day," Lance said. "You won't be able to keep up this tempo for three days straight."

"Like hell I will!" Ivy growled. "The sooner we get to Camelot, the earlier we can turn back time on this mess and get Mordred to pay for what he's done."

Katrina craned her neck to have a better look at Ivy's face and was met with the sight of Ivy twitching her mouth in a grim line, her violet-colored eyes fixated on the goal ahead. For a second, genuine _fear_ crawled up her spine, awoken by Ivy's remorseless expression. Then she shut the unreasonable worry out. Ivy might be angry and, in that state, dangerous, but her resentment targeted Mordred and no one else.

Lance either hadn't noticed Ivy's change in expression or chose to combat it the only way he knew how. "Yup, for all I care we can send Mordred straight to Purgatory with a one-way-carriage. Ban told me that place had some wonderful sights to it."

Katrina sighed in relief as Ivy's lips curled into a smile that replaced the grim determination. Only for her expression to submerge in worry after her eyes widened for an instant. Katrina nearly lost her hold on Ivy's shoulder as she dashed sideways and picked up speed the same instance.

"What is it, Ivy?" Lance asked. All humor had left his voice.

"A patrol on the road ahead, heading in our direction. At least three of them."

Even after squinting her eyes, Katrina was unable to spot anything on the well-trodden trail. But Ivy's steps spoke of alarm as she brought more and more space between herself and the supposed patrol.

Katrina's voice trembled when she spoke. "Are they from Camelot or do you think they are Mordred's men?"

"I didn't wait to let them introduce themselves first."

"Maybe it's Escanor," Lance said, but he didn't sound convinced. "You think they've seen us?"

"With our luck? Absolutely," Ivy said dryly. Each syllable was coughed up between two breaths.

Katrina pushed away the fear with all matter of will power she could find. "But doesn't that mean that running away is only delaying things? We still have to get to Camelot, and if we fight them now, we'll be able to focus on the rest of the way sooner."

"Katrina is right, Ivy. Plus, we can handle three of Mordred's minions, no problem."

Katrina didn't feel comfortable with that claim but kept her uncertainties to herself. Her seven hearts pitter-pattered in her chest with a rapidness that she feared dizziness to hijack her senses before the fighting started.

With a sigh and a heavy breath, Ivy slowed her steps, came to a hold, and turned back around to face their adversaries. "I hate both of you right now."

With an uncalled-for, risky jump, Lance catapulted himself from Ivy's shoulder and onto the ground. He eased the impact with a well-studied roll and returned to his feet, weapon in hand. Meanwhile, Katrina concentrated on her magical energy and called forward two pairs of wings to hover next to Ivy. She squinted her eyes for a moment, but the white-feathered wings kept her suspended above the ground without trouble and without setback.

Ivy's grip tightened around her weapon as she readied herself for the upcoming confrontation.

An instant later, three knights on horseback broke through the tree line ahead. Katrina's hopes sank as she recognized the crests on their armor as that of Mordred's loyal division of knights – a single sword, raised against a dawning sun over a pitch-black field.

The symbol of the Knights of the Round Table.

Their presumed leader moved his horse closer, despite the animal's natural instincts to flee from the Giant and his two underlings lack of willingness to follow his example. Katrina had never seen the man before, but from Ivy's reaction, that consisted of a low growl and the shift into a more defensive pose, Katrina could tell she had met the knight before and knew him somewhat well.

While he struggled with one hand to hold his horse steady, the leader of the patrol drew his sword with a smirk. "I have to thank you for letting us catch up to you, you spared us a tedious hunt." His gaze wandered over the trio. "Katrina, distant princess of Liones, Lancelot, Holy Knight in training of Liones, and Ivy, first princess of the Fairy Realm. Lord Mordred has missed you at the capital."

The knight's disgusting smirk widened as his eyes stopped to fixate on Ivy. "He hopes to soon reunite you with your family."

And at that exact moment, Ivy snapped. The calm before the storm was replaced by an all-out hurricane as she dropped to one knee, open palm pressed on the ground, and the earth itself split in two.

* * *

Ivy recognized the three Holy Knights of Camelot by sight, but it was the leading knight's filthy face that made her blood boil as soon as he and his fellows left the shadows of the trees.

Nashtar, once a soldier of the rebellious kingdom of Stronghold that had since been seized by Camelot, who had worked his way up the ranks of Camelot's Holy Knights in record time. Nashtar had always displayed this slimy arrogance, no matter who he was faced with, an overdose of self-esteem born from his talents on the battlefield and the praise he had gained through his accomplishments. During the past times Ivy had visited Camelot, she had come across Nashtar on multiple occasions, mostly as Mordred's second shadow.

If there was one aspect of his character she begrudgingly respected, it would be his undying loyalty to Camelot's royal bloodline, a loyalty so deeply ingrained into his blood that he supported the heir to the throne in his quest to overtake not only Camelot, but the entirety of Britannia.

To see that smug smile of his alone had sent Ivy into uncontrolled rage, but as soon as he mentioned her family, she disregarded all strategy and aimed to see Nashtar's stupid grin vanish from his face for good. Maybe he had been involved in the murder of her family, maybe he hadn't, she didn't care.

Without thinking twice, Ivy placed her empty right hand on the ground, took a split second to feel the steady heartbeat of the earth beneath her fingertips, and then willed the terrain to rearrange itself at her command. The ground ripped open beneath Nashtar and his mount, and with an agonizing sound, the horse tumbled over. Unfortunately, but as to be expected, Nashtar anticipated the rather obvious attack and jumped from the back of his horse in time to land on solid ground.

On his feet and ready to engage, the Holy Knight barked a command at his two followers: "Focus on the other two, the Giant is mine."

"Shouldn't we call for reinforcements?" the younger one of them – Ivy believed his name to have been Orland – asked with clear apprehension.

"Do as your told," his companion said.

Ivy let her gaze follow the two lesser knights as they split up to close in on them from opposite directions. She trusted Lance's abilities – and advanced healing – to handle a single opponent, but she worried about Katrina. Not because the half-Goddess lacked powerful magic to defend herself, but rather because the stressful situation might be more than she could handle. Ivy pushed the thought aside. Her own fight was about to demand all her attention.

Nashtar closed the gap separating them with each step placed in expectation of another earth-based attack. And Ivy was eager to give him exactly what he feared.

As she brought her free hand up in a motion identical to one she would use to create stone pillars, Ivy watched with satisfaction as Nashtar reacted to the supposed attack by dodging sideways into a roll. Just as she had anticipated.

And while he was caught in his forward motion, Ivy swung Gideon around in her other hand and brought the massive war hammer down with a strike that shattered the earth.

Her magical ability «Life Force» was in many ways similar to her mother's «Creation» and therefore allowed Ivy to use the channeling function of Gideon to her advantage. From where the head of the hammer connected to the ground, the earth rippled in outspreading waves, like water behaved when a stone was dropped into its depths. Nashtar was hit off-guard before he returned to his feet, for the moment robbed of his balance. Ivy didn't waste precious seconds and let Gideon's blunt head meet the grounded Holy Knight with enough force to smash his bones to pieces. And while the hit sent him flying back a solid distance, the attack fell short of the amount of damage she had expected, and Nashtar was quick to jump to his feet. His armor showed a new set of dents but his grin did not.

He dismissed imaginary dust from his shoulder plate. "I believe you're forgetting something critical here, Lady Ivy."

And she had. The annoying nature of Nashtar's magical ability. «Critical Damage» allowed him to draw out his magical energy in order to nullify any and all attacks directed at him. In short, he could take as many hits head-on as he liked without fear of injury until all his magical energy was spent or he lost focus. Ivy had seen «Critical Damage» in all its glory during a training fight between Nashtar and another Holy Knight when she had visited Camelot in her dad's place a few months ago. The match had been unbalanced from the start, since Nashtar was able to attack without concern of his own safety, and he had made quick work of the other knight with minimal effort.

Ivy grimaced while she braced for Nashtar's counter-attack. She only had two options to end this fight in her favor, one as bleak a chance as the other.

For once, she could hit Nashtar with everything she got until he would run out of magical energy and then finish him off. But since she had no clue as to how high his magic potential was, this course of action could cost her more time than she had to spare. Which left her with option number two that required her to _somehow_ bring Nashtar to use a different sort of magic that would put his magical ability on hold.

But unexpected as the turn of favors was, Nashtar surprised her by doing exactly that the next moment. He dashed forward in preparation for a jump that would bring him close enough to use the limited range of sword. And that stunt had to require some sort of magical assist, maybe a subconscious shift in attention. Otherwise he would in no way be capable of leaping a dozen feet off the ground.

Ivy pretended to shift sideways to evade Nashtar's attack but used the build-up swing to bring Gideon forward instead in hopes of catching Nashtar while he was still in the air. But she miscalculated his position and only struck emptiness. She paid for the mistake with a cut from Nashtar's blade into her right leg.

The wound wasn't deep, nothing to worry about at the moment, but the knowledge failed to silence Ivy's anger over such a pathetic mistake.

Nashtar had rebuilt distance and was moving sideways to circle her in a way commonly used in duels between two humans. Safe for now. Ivy used the brief pause to check on her comrades.

Lance was engaged in a one-on-one duel with the older knight and handled himself with relative ease while forcing his opponent to retrieve step by step. Katrina on the other hand was merely evading Orland's fire attacks; using her wings to shift left and right, she drew out the fight with no intention to deal out damage herself. She could have at least used «Goddess Ember» to trap the knight, but then again, Katrina had always struggled with this particular spell.

After she shot a brief glance at Nashtar, who seemed satisfied with maintaining distance, Ivy directed her free hand in a sideways motion, starting right in her field of view and ending at the far edge of it. The earth obliged, and soil and rock towered high while following the path of her fingertips. The growing mountain reached Orland unprepared and sent him flying against a nearby tree trunk. That should give Katrina a moment to breathe and refocus.

The negative side effect of dealing with the lower ranked knight was that Ivy had ignored Nashtar for a few seconds; enough time for him to strike forward with a deadly blow she narrowly deflected with the hilt of her weapon.

Ivy followed him before he had the chance to recover from his last attack. With an adrenalin-fueled yell, she brought Gideon to the ground and buried Nashtar beneath the hammer's head.

Like the disgusting bug that he was, Nashtar crawled out of the crater, unscathed once more. Now it was Ivy's turn to take a few steps back.

The idea to target him whenever he was relying on his magic energy was good in theory, but as long as she failed to hit him, her plan remained just that: a theory. Gideon was a tool with an incredible amount of force behind it – one solid strike had the potential to wipe a small village clean of the map –, but its weight and long hilt resulted in windups that required too much time to catch a nimble opponent. And by trying to strike Nashtar mid-motion, Ivy raised the risk to her own safety to an uncomfortable level. One misstep could mean the end.

She gritted her teeth as Nashtar raised his voice. He already saw his victory at arm's reach. "Mordred said he'd prefer for you to be brought to Liones alive, but I think he wouldn't mind if I only get him your head."

Ivy refused to waste air for a response and clenched her outstretched hand into a fist; the earth beneath Nashtar's feet rose and formed a stone-made prison around him. The sphere of rocks wouldn't be enough to hold him for long, but the diversion at least gave Ivy a chance to overthink her options.

When she risked a look around, she was relieved to see Lance jogging her way, finished with his opponent. A gaze at his shoulder that was already healing drenched his tunic in red, and other than that, he seemed unharmed. He scanned over Ivy's own wounds but refrained from pressing on the matter for now.

"Looks like my work for today is already done," he said with a wink. "So how about I help you out with that persistent admirer of yours?"

"You're an idiot," she said in her most thankful tone, and his smile widened. "What about Katrina?"

"Nah, the earth attack you hit Orland with was more than he could chew on. He's still knocked out cold, so she should be just fine."

Motivated by the same thought, the two of them looked sideways to where Katrina had landed unsteadily and was dismissing her wings.

The sound of breaking rock called for their attention as Nashtar escaped the boundaries of his earth prison; a strike of his blade let the formation tumble around him. Lance made a sound somewhere between a growl and a cough and unsheathed his second sword from his back.

"So, Nashtar, huh? I really hoped I'd never have to deal with this bastard again," he said and reformed his stance to a steadier position.

"You and me both," Ivy remarked and forced herself to ignore the exhaustion her muscles struggled against. Adrenaline had done wonders to bring her through this fight so far, but the previous night of sleepless tossing had only waited to take its revenge on her body.

Still, she spared the extra energy to concentrate on the current of the earth beneath her feet and closed her eyes as she let her hand dive into the current, as if to scoop a handful of water out of a river. She was rewarded with earth made pillars that at first emerged behind Nashtar, but soon right where he had been standing. With no option to withdraw, Nashtar was forced out of his strike-fast-retreat-faster habit – and into the range of Lance's twin blades.

They exchanged blows, and Lance always reacted a second before Nashtar made a move. His speed advantage enabled him to deal out damage a few times that would have ended the fight against any other opponent, but only caused Nashtar's signature superior smile to reappear.

And then Lance made a severe mistake.

While he aimed to land a critical hit on Nashtar's exposed neck, in an attempt to disperse more of the other's magical energy, Lance put all his focus on his right sword hand to strike forward. His left side was left wide open. And as his thoughts were occupied with landing that desired hit, Nashtar made a single sidestep that brought him away from Lance's attack and in the ideal position to use the opening to his advantage.

Ivy didn't pause to think and made her move. Afraid she could hit Lance with her current size in an attempt to save him, she used her bracelet to shrink down. And while she felt her body condense and Gideon weighed heavier in her hands, Ivy flung herself forward. She crashed into Nashtar and prevented the sword slash aimed at Lance that would have cost him his arm otherwise.

Breathing heavily, Ivy let herself be pulled to her feet by Lance, who was still caught in shock at Ivy's brash move to save him. "Thanks," he managed to mutter, out of breath himself.

"I think we're even now," she replied behind gritted teeth. Her eyes never left Nashtar.

The Holy Knight had returned to his feet and spun his sword sideways, a move solely designed to show off.

"You can't hope to defeat me, so why don't you do yourselves a favor and give up," Nashtar said while drawing closer. "That way I might be generous enough to bring you to Mordred in one piece."

"Save your breath," Lance said.

He and Ivy moved away from each other in an attempt to corner Nashtar. His eyes darted back and forth between them, unsure as to who displayed the bigger threat and who to focus on.

In the break between blows, Ivy noticed something behind Nashtar, a shadow hidden at the nearby tree line. Whoever they were, they were moving closer. Ivy shot a look towards Lance to warn him about the approaching danger, but before her eyes could meet his, the shadow dashed out of the cover of the trees. They closed the space separating them from Nashtar in a matter of a heartbeat and drove their broadsword into the gap in his armor between the back and shoulder piece.

As if all stabilizing force of his muscles had disappeared, Nashtar dropped to the ground. The grass blades underneath him turned crimson.

Now that the shadow had moved out into the open, Ivy noted that it seemed to be human, equipped with an armor and helmet she believed to have seen before, but she failed to place the memory. The knight shook away the bloodstains on their blade, sheathed the weapon at their side, and lifted their helmet; revealing a girl less than two years older than Ivy.

An ocean of conflicting feelings washed over her, and she took an instinctual step away from their savior.

"Errin," was all she managed to say.

* * *

**(A/N)** Please don't expect updates to remain anywhere near this frequent, but I wanted to get this chapter out early so that you all have a better understanding of where I'm going with this.

This is a long-term project of mine that needs a lot of tweaking and line-editing because I rely way too much on ellipsis and a handful of other bad writing habits of mine. The first draft is nearly finished, but I plan to shuffle a few things around, maybe add or take out some scenes. I want this story to be as enjoyable as possible, especially because I'm already asking for the benefit of your doubt with all these non-canon characters.

All the best to you out there!

**Edit: **I improved the prose and got rid of a bunch of useless adverbs.


	3. An Unexpected Ally

– A few days before The Fall –

Ivy lay on her back, and her eyes trailed over the sky as she watched the clouds go by in an endless chase that never crowned a clear victor. When a huge cluster moved away from the sun, she reached up with her hand to save her eyes from the sudden burst of light. The scent of the forest was all-encompassing, a rich tapestry of moss and herbs interwoven with the sweeter aroma of bluebells and daisies that Ivy knew better than any other smell in this world. The components were so familiar to her that, in all but the rarest of occasions, she didn't stop to think about them. But since she had nothing to do other than pass time, her wandering mind picked apart the individual fragrances all on its own.

Her mom had returned from her monthly visit to the capital of Giants, Megadoza, and she had promised to do something fun to celebrate. The details on this ominous something remained a mystery, but Ivy suspected that it was related to the brief chat her parents had had with Merlin via «Water Window», a long-distance communication spell of Merlin's still in testing. But until then, Ivy waited and worked out a way to feign excitement over the upcoming fuss.

"Ivy?" When she mustered the willpower to follow the sound of the voice with her head, Ivy saw her dad float a few feet away, his head tilted sideways. "Have you seen your siblings recently?"

She pushed herself into a sitting position. "Aura said she wanted to go to the lake Lance showed her, and Helbram should be around here somewhere."

"I found him!" Diane cheered and stepped into the sunlight of the clearing with Helbram in her arms.

She had shrunken down to human size, a choice she made with more frequency after each return home from her clan. As if she wanted to clean herself of the experience. Giants were a troublesome bunch, and Ivy called herself lucky to have avoided them for most of her life.

Helbram escaped his mother's overprotective arms and floated up to Ivy. His violet-colored eyes gleamed with delight.

"Mom said we're gonna go to Liones!" he said and performed a backflip in midair.

"Helbram! No stunts, we talked about this," Diane said, but she was smiling.

She gave King a casual kiss on the cheek, and his face promptly turned red, which made Diane giggle. Ivy rolled her eyes. In the days following Diane's returns from affairs regarding her clan, the two of them entered a new extreme of devotion towards each other, spiced with the type of tizzy that could only be found in youths plunging headfirst into their first crush.

Ivy turned the sapphire of her Shrinking Bracelet – a gift from Merlin – and hopped over to them. Helbram followed her on her heels.

"So, we're visiting Meliodas?" Ivy asked. She had always enjoyed her stays in Liones' capital; Meliodas and Elizabeth were pretty much second family to her, and while their cooking skills could use some polish, they made for great company.

She noticed the slight crack of worry in her dad's expression but didn't pay it much attention, as her mom answered instead. "Yes, we'll pay a visit to the Captain and Gilthunder, sorry_ King_ Gilthunder. Or is it Lord Gilthunder? I will never get used to all these titles humans like to toss around."

King shot her a glance as he noticed Diane's ramblings before he turned his attention to his two present children. "Ivy, can you and Helbram please go find Aura and Cynthia? We want to leave as soon as we can."

"Okay dad," Ivy said while Helbram nodded with excitement at the task at hand.

She followed Helbram away from their parents, into the shadows of the conifers rising to the sky in this part of the Fairy King's Forest. When she was sure they were out of hearing range, Ivy leaned over to her brother.

"Can you tell where Cynthia is right now?" she asked in a hushed tone.

Helbram closed his eyes for a few seconds while tilting his head sideways, a motion he had picked up from his dad. Once he had found the necessary concentration to locate his sister's heart, his eyelids flung open.

"She's at the Sacred Tree. And she's very concentrated," he whispered in the same conspiratorial tone.

"Okay, will you do me a favor and bring her back here? But first you can scare her with a little prank. You'll have to be very sneaky and stealthy."

Helbram nodded and rushed away with a grin. To be strictly_ allowed_ to annoy his older sister excited him even more than the promised trip to Liones.

Technically, it was now Ivy's turn to fetch up Aura from the nearby lake, but her dad's worried expression made her revise that task. Something was concerning him, and whatever that something was, if it was enough to worry the Fairy King, it had to be interesting.

And while Ivy was not one to eavesdrop on her parents, her curiosity got the better of her, and she traced her steps back to the clearing where her parents waited. Careful to avoid discovery, Ivy shifted behind the massive trunk of a tree and listened to her parents' discussion.

"… Merlin wouldn't mention that if she didn't think it was important," Diane said. The urgency in her voice made Ivy shiver in the deep shadows of her hiding spot.

"I know," King said, "it's just that I can't believe Mordred would actually go that far. I know he's angry, and with how the Council has passed him over, he has any right to be, but _this_? I'll talk to him again."

"The Captain's already tried to solve this with words. I think at this point we have to consider that he has come into contact with the Colossai. There are enough people among Camelot's Holy Knights who might know about their existence." Diane traded the frustration in her voice for sympathy. "King, you can't change him if he doesn't want to change. Regardless of how much you try."

Ivy was certain to have lost the topic of the conversation; the word Colossai in particular confused her. And what did Mordred have to do with them?

"When we meet up with Gilthunder and the rest of the Sins, we'll hopefully be able to come up with something," King said with a sigh. "If necessary, we can stop Mordred from using the Colossai against Camelot by force. I just hope it won't come down to it."

Ivy peeked from behind the trunk of her hiding tree to watch her parents as they leaned their foreheads against one another.

"I know you don't," Diane said so softly that Ivy almost couldn't hear her.

They parted from each other, only for King to look right to where Ivy was hidden. He furrowed as though he had picked up on a sound of which he could not trace the origin. Feeling exposed, Ivy jumped and ran to collect Aura. Despite the slim likelihood, she hoped that her dad hadn't noticed her spying on them.

Regardless, what she had heard more than worried her. Mordred was up to something, and her parents were troubled enough to journey to Liones' capital because of his plans.

A sense of foreboding crawled beneath Ivy's skin, and the chill did not leave her for the remainder of the day.

* * *

Out of all the people Lance could have thought of, Errin had to be one of the ones he was least expecting to see. Hell, he would have been less surprised if his father had shown up out of the blue to save them from Nashtar – quite the feat for someone presumed dead. So all he did was stare with his mouth hanging agape as Errin's face emerged from under the helmet of their savior. She shook her hair, an intentional mess of short, dark locks, back to place and let her gaze wander from Ivy to Lance, unimpressed.

"I think you owe me a 'thank you'," Errin said with a brief look to where Nashtar had dropped to the ground. He wasn't dead, his chest rose and fell with defiant consistency, but he wouldn't get up to fight them anytime soon either.

"How in the world –?" was all Lance managed to stutter.

"«Override», remember?"

Lance mentally facepalmed at his slow-geared mind process. Of course he remembered «Override», Errin's magical ability, that he more often than not liked to refer to as cheating. The nature of «Override» allowed Errin to _override_ the effects of magical abilities around her if she focused on a specific target. «Override» was a good enough explanation as to how Errin had managed to one-shot Nashtar, but it certainly did not explain why on earth she had appeared in the first place.

After a few uncomfortable beats of silence, Lance activated the needed brain cells to rephrase his question. "What in the name of the Demon King are you _doing_ here?"

"I could ask you the same question, considering the fact that you three are on your own out here," Errin retorted. "I for my part have been following Nashtar and his underlings to see if they can get me to Mordred."

Ivy, who had remained silent up to this point, jumped forward. "Do you have any idea WHAT HE DID?!"

Errin made a defensive step backwards but maintained her collected façade. "He's not at fault here. Whatever happened or you believed to have seen, he's not the one to blame."

Ivy balanced on the brink of letting Errin regret her words immensely and in an instance, but Lance couldn't fault her on her fury. Whenever it came to Mordred, Errin chose to turn a blind eye. Still, he wasn't going to let Ivy enact her revenge against Errin.

While taking a hold of his cousin's wrist, Lance stepped between the two. "Okay, how about we put this on hold for now and see if Katrina is unhurt?"

His words realized the desired effect. Ivy looked sideways, abashed, and freed her hand from his loosened grip to turn towards Katrina, who was approaching them a bit warily. Errin's face softened by a significant amount at the sight of the younger girl.

"Thank you, Errin," Katrina said, her voice little more than a weak whisper. "We wouldn't have made it without you."

"No problem. I'm glad you're safe," Errin said, stressing the word 'you' a little too much. Ivy and Lance could have turned into thin air, and she would not have batted an eye.

After inspecting Katrina's face and making sure she was indeed alright, Errin turned back towards Ivy, a question on her lips. "So, where are the others?"

"Dead," Ivy answered.

Errin took a step back, as if to escape the reality brought forth by Ivy's response. For the first time, she looked hurt. "So, you're saying that Mordred –?"

"Yes."

Errin shook her head in denial and avoided Ivy's cold stare best she could. "He would not have done that, he wouldn't go that far," she murmured. The way she stared into the middle distance, as if her whole worldview had shattered, robbed her of the confidence with which she carried herself, and Lance _almost_ felt sorry for her.

"Errin, we wanted to search for Merlin to find a spell that can make all of this undone," Katrina began in an attempt to ease the fronts. "Do you know if she's still in Camelot?"

Errin snapped out of her staring and placed a comforting hand on Katrina's shoulder. "You're too late. She disappeared about four days ago. Same with Gaius."

If possible, Lance's hopes drowned even deeper. Merlin had been their best and frankly their _only_ option to turn back time and prevent any of this mess from happening. She was the most respected Mage in Britannia for a reason, and if anyone would have been able to tap into the complex field of time magic, it would have been her. But that chance had just jumped ship to leave them fighting their way to shore on their own.

Even with Errin's help, in no way did the four of them pose any sort of threat to Mordred. The best idea Lance came up with, was to go home and hide in the Fairy King's Forest, praying that Mordred wouldn't bother to look for them. Which was a problem in and off itself because the protection the Fairy King granted his realm with had dissipated with his death. Making it just another steppingstone on Mordred's path to rule all of Britannia.

"We should move in case Nashtar has some backup men stored somewhere," Errin interrupted his train of thought.

With a soft whistle, she ordered her horse, that had waited for her in safe distance from the battlefield, to her side. Motivated by the example of one of their fellow species, the two remaining horses once belonging to the Holy Knight's trotted closer as well. Ceasing the opportunity, Errin took a hold of both mount's reins and handed one to Lance without explanation. He still stood rooted to the spot as Errin helped Katrina onto the back of her own horse and proceeded by lifting herself into the saddle with the expertise of endless practice. She raised a brow at Lance and Ivy, who also made no move to accompany her in her plan, and let her mount prance in annoyance.

"Are you two waiting for an invitation or do you prefer to walk?" Patience was certainly not her major strength.

Ivy struggled with the horse Errin had handed to her. The animal rejected her on pure instinct, thanks to thousands of years of Giants posing a deadly threat ingrained into its natural behavior. But thankfully, Ivy was only half Giant, and for once her Fairy side shone through, as she extended an open palm to gain the animal's trust. With less grace than Errin, Ivy heaved herself onto the mount before Lance followed her example.

Errin set her horse into motion, and Ivy and Lance hurried to keep up.

"Where are we going?" Lance asked with a raised voice to reach Errin, who refused to look at him in favor of an expressionless stare ahead.

"Just a bit further to get some space between us and Nashtar. There's a cave nearby where we can hide out for the moment."

'Just a bit further' turned out to be a good two hours' worth of riding at high speed that passed in silence between the group. Gentle hillsides made way for rock-strewn terrain with barren soil, where crops were grown less often. The region had once marked the outskirts of the kingdom of Edinburgh, but after the capital had been overtaken by Vampires and their subsequent defeat by the Seven Deadly Sins, the land had remained ruler-less. These days, Edinburgh's dry plains represented a part of the shaky border area between Liones and Camelot, and no one was able to tell whom the province, that had since been dubbed Northumberland, belonged to.

Therefore, the group's arrival on Camelotian ground turned out quite unspectacular.

Ivy looked a few times as if she was about to fall off of her horse but always caught herself in time. Lance had no particular skills with horses himself – he preferred to stay on his own feet –, but he managed the trip without complaint and without making a fool of himself in front of a particularly unforgiving Errin.

The overhang of slate spacious enough to fit four people and not an ounce beyond that nestled in a grove of larches failed to meet Lance's expectations of a 'cave', but he sure preferred the hole to having no cover at all. They seemed to have escaped Nashtar and his fellow men unseen, a fact that should have comforted Lance, but he couldn't shake the tenseness in his muscles.

Overhead, a cloudbank promising rain rolled closer.

Ivy fell from her horse rather than dismounting it, and Lance caught a glimpse of her leg wound that he had forgotten about, and that had yet to be treated. A clear-cut failure on his part. He felt sick, and he needed all his mental strength to stop his thoughts from wandering – wandering to the dark place he avoided like the plague. The color of Ivy's face swayed somewhere between ash-gray and dead-white. Lance would have offered a hand to guide her into the cave, but she seemed to have enough strength left to walk on her own, and he wasn't in the mood to argue.

Once Ivy had sat herself up against the uneven surface of the cave wall, her eyes closed from exhaustion, Katrina walked over and kneeled next to her injured leg. Without a word, she let an open palm hover over the cut that had soaked the stocking above the rim of the boot with blood. After a few failed attempts, she called forth the divine light of the Goddess Clan's healing magic. The cut closed in a matter of moments in a fashion similar to what Lance's advanced healing was capable of.

Katrina pushed a lock of hair out of her face, satisfied with the result of the spell. Ivy opened her eyes and moved her leg in expectance of pain, only to be surprised to find none.

"Thank you," she said and rubbed over the disappeared wound.

Katrina beamed as her eyes turned from Goddess triskelion to emerald. "I owed you because of that Holy Knight that was attacking me. I… didn't know what to do at the moment. I'm not that helpful in combat, am I?"

Ivy pushed away from the cave wall to give Katrina a hug that was as much reassurance as a silent 'thank you'. "You did great," she said and allowed Katrina to bury her head into her shoulder.

"Don't take it too hard," Lance said. "Nashtar would've had all of us for dinner if Errin hadn't stepped in to save our asses." He turned to Errin, who had watched the conversation unfold without showcasing any desire to partake in it. "Thanks for that by the way."

"You still owe me an explanation," Errin said, dead serious as usual. "Why don't we start with that?"

Lance exchanged a glance with Ivy, who was settled against the cave wall once more, her eyes dull and unfocused. Judging from her behavior, she wasn't interested in clearing things up and share whatever additional information she had on Mordred's assault on Liones, so it would be up to Lance to fill Errin in.

"Okay, remember how there was this rumor about Mordred using the Colossai to reclaim Camelot? The thing is, he wasn't interested in Camelot and used the Colossai against Liones instead. Our parents were there to stop him, and Escanor had planned to back them up with a couple trusted Holy Knights of Camelot. But nothing worked out as planned, and now all the Sins are dead. At least we have to assume that they are."

He tried to make eye contact with Ivy, but she had paid no attention to his words and instead stared at the cave entrance framed by overhanging roots from the trees growing above. Specks of dirt flacked off of them.

Errin had listened to Lance's short version of the story in complete silence, but now her eyes were piercing him with tangible heat.

"You're lying," she said with a conviction able to move mountains. "Mordred can be begrudging and stubborn, but he would never raise his hand against your parents. He trusts Meliodas and Harlequin if he trusts anyone."

"They trusted _him_," Ivy corrected, tense and apprehensive again. All exhaustion had fallen off of her. "And he thanked them with _murder_."

"Shut up!" Errin shouted, suddenly on her feet. Her hands were clenched into fists and there was little doubt to be had that she was willing to use them.

"Look Errin," Lance said, "we know you're all too eager to stand behind everything Mordred does, but –"

"I said, SHUT UP!"

Lance closed his mouth. He had never seen Errin's temper get the better of her in such an extreme fashion, and he couldn't help but be reminded of Mordred. The uncontrolled rage that was leaking from Errin's face possessed the same intensity.

Ivy hadn't even flinched and returned Errin's gaze with the coldness of someone who had nothing left to lose. "Believe it or don't. It doesn't change the fact that my family is dead."

After these words, silence befell them. Errin had nothing to reply in her defense, and Ivy was too caught up in her emotional chaos to speak. Heaven, she was starting to freak Lance out just as much as Errin.

So instead of throwing himself into the war zone that was the fallout between Errin and Ivy, he busied himself with running ideas around his head as to how they were supposed to turn back time without any help from Merlin to guide them. When it came to all matters of magic, he was at a loss, and he knew for a fact that Ivy's talents lay elsewhere too. As for Errin, he could only make an educated guess, but complex spells bored rather than enticed her, as she had in past instances much preferred to take a problem head on. Her choice of career as a Holy Knight certainly didn't stem from an affinity with practicing incantations.

This made Katrina the only natural choice to turn to when it came to performing a ritual that would open a time portal. If something like a time portal existed. And if they would be able to find a way to get their hands on an instruction manual. Lance could very well imagine Merlin keeping an entire encyclopedia worth of time-based spells in her laboratory in Camelot, but that left him with the uncertainty of whether or not Katrina would be able to learn and carry out a ritual of such complexity.

Lance sighed. This was getting him nowhere.

He was in desperate need of fresh air, and he would take any chance that got him out of this cave filled with tension one was able to almost _see_. While regarding Errin and Ivy with a hopefully obvious look of distain for their behavior, he clambered to his feet and stepped out of the cave for a short walk.

It had started to rain, and the fresh, distinct scent of wet grass and leaves calmed his mind. He had lived in Liones' capital for most of the past year to begin his training as a Holy Knight – he would have started way earlier if his mom hadn't been so strict on preventing the whole business – but he had grown up in the Fairy King's Forest, and the endless wood had remained his home regardless. So, in a way, the gentle rustling of leaves and the faint sound of raindrops splashing into puddles held a fragment of home.

Lance closed his eyes and raised his chin to let the droplets fall on his face. Rain reminded him of Aura.

Aura loved nothing in this world more than the rain, and she had dragged Lance out into cold weather more times than he could remember. But then again, there were only a marginal number of things that Aura did not find delightful. She had the marvelous talent to find beauty in everything she came across, be that a caterpillar she hadn't seen before, Elaine's horrendous fruit loaf, or a cloudburst.

And now she was dead.

Lance later could not tell how long he had been standing out in the open, but when he reentered the cave, his clothes were soaked. The rain on his lips had left behind an unusual salty taste.

* * *

Ivy put a hand over her mouth to suffocate the scream that had been rising up her throat. Cold sweat covered her arms and made her shiver against the cool air. She couldn't breathe.

_Her dad fixated her gaze with his. The amber of his irises had changed, all warmth erased from them. Something inside of him had died._

When she realized she was lying on stone, the panic not only resurfaced but almost caused the scream to escape her mouth. The last time she had gained consciousness while lying on a stone made surface, she had been met with the sight of her siblings, dead or dying in front of her.

_She stumbled to her feet and almost fell back down as her feet lost their grip on the tiled floor covered in blood. Blood that might belong to Helbram. Or maybe her mother. She could not tell. The part of her mind responsible for logic had blacked out, and only her reflexes ordered her to drag herself forward__._

Ivy tried to calm herself with slow breaths, but it did not help, nothing helped, her heart kept beating in her ribcage as if to break through her chest. She forced herself to take in her surroundings, to look at Lance, Katrina, and Errin, all asleep in the cave they had taken shelter in yesterday. But seeing them safe helped nothing to calm her, and her staggered breaths sounded louder against their silence.

_Her feet kept on moving while every part of her battered mind and body screamed at her to run, run away from what had happened and what was unfolding behind her eyes once again, in an endless loop._ _Her senses where shrouded, as though she was moving underwater, and she barely registered that the first form of her father's Sacred Treasure followed her through the deserted castle._

_She hadn't reached Ban yet, when Chastifol's spear form dropped to the cobblestone with a sharp clank._

Ivy crawled rather than walked out of the cave, and she only stopped once she felt grass beneath her feet, still damp from the rainfall last afternoon. All energy had left her muscles, only the trembling of her hands brought forth from trauma remained. The tears ran down her face in violent sobs, muffled against her knees, only for her to hear. Tiredness soon replaced her inaudible cries, magnified by her body reacting to the cold, but Ivy was too afraid to sleep, too afraid to be haunted by the images in her head. If necessary, she would stay awake until sleeplessness overtook her with all force and grant her the bliss of a dreamless coma.

With a regained semblance of composure, Ivy peeked into the cave and was thankful to see all of them asleep, unaware of her turmoil. Lance leaned against the cave wall and used his jacket as a replacement for a pillow. Soft snoring noises escaped his lips. Under different circumstances he might have been funny to look at.

Katrina was curled into a tiny ball, as far away from the entrance and any of the others as possible in the limited space. Errin didn't even look like she was sleeping with the way she lay on her back, one hand on the hilt of her sword, ready to defend herself if need be.

Ivy couldn't help but project her feelings of betrayal towards Mordred onto Errin, even though she was in no way to blame. But the trust Errin showered Mordred with rendered her unable to accept the fact that he had become a ruthless murderer. And _this_ Ivy could not forgive her.

But she was too burned out to be angry, even at Errin, and so, Ivy brushed the thought aside and sat down cross-legged at the cave entrance.

She concentrated on the earth, on the life forms that inhabited its depths, and on the forest around the cave. Everything pulsated with liveliness, unfazed by the living and dying of those conscious beings that inhabited this realm, and the forest would continue to thrive regardless of a single mind's upset. She could feel the magic field covering all of Britannia curl above the earth's surface like an enormous cloth rippled by faceless forces pulling at its edges.

It hummed stronger than Ivy remembered. Or maybe her mind had become overly sensitized.

More than anything else, focusing on the faint sources of life around her prevented her from falling asleep. As long as she stared at the individual blades of grass, she wouldn't have to close her eyes. As long as she listened to the wind brushing past the foliage, she wouldn't have to remember.

This way she kept the dreams at bay until the sun rose in the east.

"Hey there." When Ivy turned around, Lance stood behind her, displaying a smile that did not reach his eyes. He had approached her with such quiet steps she hadn't heard him until he had opened his mouth.

"I hope I didn't wake you," Ivy said and moved a few inches so that Lance could seat himself next to her.

He didn't answer, but he joined her as she gazed into the open, where the sun edged past the slender larch trunks. In a few weeks, their needles would turn yellow as the season changed from summer to fall, but for now, their foliage bristled with energy, nurtured by yesterday's rainfall. Shoulder to shoulder, Lance and Ivy watched the remnants of rain resting on cones and needles catch the sunlight.

"You didn't sleep, did you?" Lance asked.

"A little bit," she said. He didn't need to know that she regretted giving in to her exhaustion and was dreading the moment she closed her eyes.

But Lance wouldn't let her get away with vague replies. "Will you ever tell me what happened to them? They were my family too, you know?"

She wasn't ready. Not when the images lingered so fresh in memory and she didn't need to concentrate to see Helbram's dead eyes stare into the nothingness. Not when her heart felt like breaking after running for days without pause whenever she thought about her parents.

Lance sighed in defeat. "If you ever feel like talking, just know that I'll be there for you. We'll find a way to bring them back. It worked for my mom, so we already have one instance in Britannia's history that proves that death is relative. All we have to do is repeat that a bunch of times over, and we should be good."

"Sounds like great odds to me. We'll come up with something. I know we will." She wasn't nearly as confident as she pretended.

"I thought about it," Lance said. "We should still go to Camelot, even though Merlin won't be there. She must've had some sort of textbook on her spells, right? So, all we need to do is find her instructions and then let Katrina do the magic."

"Katrina?" In Ivy's book, they shouldn't be dragging her any deeper into this madness than they already had.

"You want to do it instead?" Lance asked and shifted with a pained expression. "'Cause I know that I won't ever pull that trick off. I don't like this either, but when we can't count on Merlin or Gaius, we don't have much of a choice."

"I'd feel better if we could send her to the Fairy King's Forest."

"Me too, but she'll never let that happen. She has all the stubbornness of her parents, and you and I both know that she won't back down because we tell her to. We just have to make sure that nothing happens to her. At all costs."

They let the sun rise higher, as neither of the them wanted to break apart or start waking the others. When Errin stepped out of the cave, armored and ready to set out, Lance gifted her an actual smile, which angered Ivy more than she would have liked to admit. Errin, in turn, overlooked both Lance and his friendliness and instead took her time to survey the area.

After she had made sure that no imminent dangers waited to attack, she turn back to them with furrowed brows. "Do you still want to go to Camelot?"

Ivy left Lance the opportunity to explain his plan himself. "Yeah, we want to go to Merlin's laboratory and see if we can find anything of use."

"I already told you that she disappeared."

"But her books and writings are still there, right? That's what we're after."

Errin let her gaze trail north with a severe lack of interest. "Whatever suits you. I will head to Liones to see if I can find Mordred. According to your story, I should be able to meet up with him there."

Ivy clenched her hands as her rage reared its ugly head. Errin didn't believe a word they were saying, and worse still, she assumed she could walk up to Mordred and talk to him as if nothing happened. As if he hadn't seized a neighboring kingdom. As if he hadn't committed genocide in Liones.

"Actually, we wanted to ask you if you could join us," Lance said, much to Ivy's dismay. "You know Camelot better than we do, and you'd be a real asset to our mission combat wise too."

"Why would I help you?" Errin asked. She had narrowed her eyes nonstop throughout Lance's suggestion and was now inspecting his face in search for a hint of deception.

"Because we ask for your help, and if you're dumb enough to go to Liones expecting Mordred to be the caring weakling you might have known him as, you're gonna get yourself killed. That clear to you?"

Errin took a step back and worked her jawline. Everything Lance had said was true, and they would have a better shot getting in and out of Camelot with Errin's help, but Ivy wouldn't mind getting a kingdom worth of space between herself and Errin. Her tolerance had limits, and Errin had a talent of exploiting every strained nerve to shove her further towards the last line.

Which was why Ivy wasn't exactly thrilled to hear Errin's response. "Fine, I'll help you out. But I'm not doing this for any of you. Not even for Katrina."

"That works fine for me," Ivy said and reached for a tone that did not sound like she was about to jump up and strangle Errin out of spite. But she didn't put too much effort into the attempt.

Errin chose to avoid another exchange of looks and marched back inside to prepare for their departure. The aggravating sound of her metal boots clacking on stone followed her.

Ivy swallowed the string of curses she was tempted to besiege Errin with and instead headed after to see if she could make herself useful. The sooner they would reach Camelot, the earlier she could bid Errin farewell and forget the other traitorous face she saw in hers.

* * *

At first, Errin had been glad, delighted even, to find the other three, despite the confusing circumstances. She had assumed Nashtar had gone rogue and had a vendetta to settle with one of them, which was the type of thing Nashtar would do as long as his personal goals did not conflict with his loyalty. Errin had trained with the fellow Holy Knight on a handful of occasions and they had joined forces on some low threat missions, but other than professional respect, Errin had little to spare for him. And the fact that he had dragged Orland and Bryanor into his blood feud overstepped the mark.

Which was why she didn't hesitate for long and jumped in to aid Lance and Ivy instead of Nashtar. Since he was so occupied with his almost-victory – a flaw of his no advice or punishment in this world sufficed to drive out –, Errin had no trouble wounding him and end the fight before the drama could escalate any further.

But when she revealed herself, she was met with utter terror and betrayal in Ivy's eyes instead of thankfulness. Errin failed to explain what Ivy had seen in her that caused a reaction as extreme as hers. And her confusion didn't stop there, as Lance also behaved hostile in her presence. Errin had believed to stand on solid ground with Lance. Both of them worked towards becoming the most capable Holy Knights, he of Liones, she of Camelot. To then see him side with his cousin, who he loved to pick a fight with at every turn, made her even more defensive.

Katrina seemed to be the only one uneager to pick a bone with her. But since Katrina was too gentle of a soul to have a gripe with anyone, Errin found little comfort in her friendliness.

The cavern Errin lead them to was one of her favorite places to spend the night and had provided her with shelter many times on her patrols around Camelot's northern borders, and for the duration of the trip, she had allowed her to questions remain unanswered, even though they were running around in her head with the clear intention to make her snap.

Now that she knew what put them on defense, she wished to have stayed in the dark on the matter.

Mordred. According to them, he had done something so horrific that Errin was incapable of imagining it; she refused to imagine it. _Murder _was the word Ivy had used to describe his actions.

She knew Mordred, better than all of them, which was why she knew they were lying. They had no idea what he had gone through and how severely he had been betrayed by those he had trusted, denied his birth right of the throne of Camelot by the Council that was supposed to support him.

And with that thought came the doubts. What if all that he had endured had caused him to fall back on drastic methods? What if he _had_ committed the crimes they accused him of? She denied herself the time to consider this possibility. The scenario they had described was too far-fetched, too farcical to be of any substance. A ruse maybe, set up by some enemy determined to drag Mordred's name and image further into ruin. Heaven knew he had made enough of those.

Errin remained steadfast in her desire to journey to Liones and see the ruse the others had been tricked by fall apart. She had made her peace with that decision, and she had made her peace with letting the other three follow whatever ludicrous plan they had.

Only for Lance to outright ask for her help.

She resented the idea. Neither did she trust them enough to believe in their story, nor would this detour bring her any closer to Mordred. But she also couldn't deny them. Because if any of their story _was_ true and not some poorly interpreted version of events created by scared children, then Errin was best advised to stay with them and prevent them from falling victim to their idiocy.

One had to be careful when meddling with time, and she would not let them misuse powerful time magic to screw everything up. Be it intentional or not.

:.:.:

On horseback, the trip to the capital of Camelot took about two and a half days when going at a reasonable pace that didn't push the animals too much.

Errin had her guards up at all times, and part of her expected to be followed by Nashtar or some other rogue Holy Knights. The idea of coming across the crest of the Round Table tightened her chest. If, and only _if_, Mordred was responsible for the deaths of the Seven Deadly Sins, it suggested itself that he would concentrate his forces on finding their children. Either to prevent news from spreading or to get rid of anyone who posed a threat. If.

And although Ivy held onto her initial distrust, Errin had to admit that she enjoyed the company to an extent. She had spent most of the past month out in the field by herself, and trading the solitude for conversation, as sparse as the words came, was a welcome change of pace. Katrina in particular never failed to bless her with gentle words or gestures.

As they drew closer to where Camelot waited for them, Katrina – once again settled in front of Errin –craned her neck in an attempt to make herself heard better.

"I don't think we're showing our gratefulness towards you enough," she said in a manner that made her sound more mature than she was. "You had no reason to help us, but now you do, and that's more than we can ask for. We need every bit of help we can get. I know Lance and Ivy don't express it well, but I'm sure they are glad to have you too."

Errin struggled to overcome her loss for words. "You don't have to mention it. I want answers, and I hope to find some of them in Camelot."

But now that Katrina had initiated the discussion, Errin could no longer hold back the one question that had been nagging at her.

"Why are Lance and Ivy so mad with me?" she asked but regretted her curiosity when Katrina turned away. Her eyes went glassy with thought.

"Ivy has seen something." Katrina choosing each word with great care. "Lance and I were both outside the capital when the Colossai appeared, but Ivy was there, along with her family. I know that my parents are dead, I felt the end of their magical presences, but I wasn't there to see them die. I think Ivy was."

"Ivy has younger siblings, right? What happened to them?"

"From what Ivy's hinted at, Mordred killed them. All three of them."

Errin swallowed a burst of nausea. She had met Ivy's siblings briefly if at all, but she remembered that they were far younger than her, children by human standards, not to speak of the lifespan of Fairies or Giants. And the idea that Mordred, the Mordred she had grown up alongside with, would lay his hands on children was sickening, it was _wrong_. On a fundamental level. Errin wished she hadn't asked.

Her mind was still going haywire from Katrina's words when Katrina softly nudged her with one elbow.

"Is this the capital of Camelot? It must be, right?" she asked. Awe had replaced the sorrow in her voice.

Katrina was right. The town that stretched over the majority of the horizon ahead, was indeed Camelot. Surrounded by high outer walls designed to hold any opposing army at bay, the kingdom's capital presented itself with wide avenues intercepting the outer quarters and connecting the main gates to the heart of it all, the royal palace. Its manifold towers and turrets, designed with a clever meticulousness to seemingly defy gravity, spiraled far over the height of the walls and could be seen from a far distance. Red shingles gleamed against the light of the low hanging sun.

Despite everything that might have happened during the past days, the sight of the capital still evoked the feeling of coming home after a long journey in Errin, and the familiar stone structures lifted her spirits out of the dark thoughts that she had borne.

Under different circumstances, she would have ordered her horse to a last sprint, reminiscent of the childish races she had run with Mordred, but she slowed the mount with a soft pull of the reins instead and waited for Lance and Ivy to catch up.

"So, what's the plan again?" she asked. Her question mainly targeted Lance, as she doubted that Ivy would have cared to give her an answer.

"We go in there, get to Merlin's laboratory, find her spell book, and sneak out again," Lance said, which earned him a frown from Errin.

"And how exactly have you planned on all of us to go in there? Mordred might not be in the position to control the city, but the Council sure is, and the guards won't just let you pass because you ask nicely. Even if they're not actively looking for you, these days not just anyone is allowed to enter the capital."

Now it was Lance's turn to frown. "I thought you as a Holy Knight could get us through no problem."

Errin bit her lip. "Let's just say when I left it wasn't under the best of conditions. Besides, I won't get all three of you through if you're wanted. I'm positive Ivy's known by sight by a couple of guards, being the daughter of the Fairy King."

Errin's glance at Ivy confirmed her suspicion, before dark clouds formed in her eyes at the mention of her father.

"And you have a better idea?" Ivy asked matter-of-factly.

"Simple. We wait until after sunset and then fly over the walls. You as half-Fairies can fly, right?"

With an unfair amount of satisfaction, Errin reveled in the indignant expressions of Lance and Ivy. She knew that neither of them had the needed Fairy magic at their disposal, but their faces were priceless and well worth the risk of revenge at a later point.

"I can fly though," Katrina said.

"Look, I was just messing with them, that wasn't really my –"

"Maybe that's not such a bad idea," Lance cut in. "It'll spare us the trouble of dealing with the guards at the gate. You can carry one of us at a time, right?"

Katrina nodded, albeit with a bit of wariness.

Lance grinned. "Then it's settled. Katrina will get us over the wall, and the rest is a walk in the park."

"If we're going by the assumption that the walls will be unguarded, which seems unlikely to me," Ivy put in. "I could also give you two a lift in Giant form, and then Katrina only needs to carry me up when I'm shrunk down again. It'd be a lot faster than having Katrina fly back and forth three times."

And while Lance's grin grew wider at Ivy's words, Errin was in no way fond of the way events were unfolding.

"No and no to both ideas," she said before they could run with their idiotic plan of action. "We'll draw way too much attention if we do any of that! There are patrols on the battlements all the time, and there's no way they wouldn't notice a Giant or an actual Goddess, even at night."

"How about a distraction?" Ivy suggested. "We can start a fire nearby and carry out our plan as soon as all the attention is drawn to it."

"And alarm them that something is obviously wrong? Great idea."

Lance snapped his fingers to get everyone's attention – with the added bonus of preventing another fight between Ivy and Errin – as an idea took shape in his mind.

"The part with the distraction isn't too bad." Errin could almost see the gears turning in his head. "We just need something that is less obvious than fire. A Giant!"

The three pairs of raised eyebrows weren't enough to demotivate Lance in the slightest, and he leniently ignored the murmured 'good joke' from Ivy.

"Sightings of Giants aren't uncommon in Camelot," he continued, "but it's more than enough to raise awareness. And while they're still busy figuring out whether they should investigate, Katrina can get over the outer wall unnoticed. Not all of us need to help sort through Merlin's stuff. If we split up, we can maximize our chances by buying Katrina a bigger opening and more time in Merlin's lab."

Errin had her fair share of issues with the plan and for once, Ivy agreed. "I don't like this. When only one of us goes with her, we increase the risk for Katrina."

"I'll be fine," Katrina ensured. "We have to think about what's best for the plan as a whole. Our families are counting on us."

Errin didn't have the heart to tell Katrina that dead people couldn't count on anyone and instead went over her own role in Lance's plan. Without a doubt, she would be the one to escort Katrina to Merlin's laboratory. She knew Camelot better than Lance, and, with no offence, she perceived herself to be better fit to protect Katrina if they ran into unfavorable surprises.

"Fine," she said before Lance could state his opinion on the matter. "I'll go with Katrina then, and you, Lance, are going to stay behind with Ivy."

Lance's features hardened, and he clenched the reins of his horse, haunted by ghosts only he could see. Errin had seen these wide, tormented eyes and the grim lines around his mouth before, with Mordred. After what happened in Sorestan.

"Makes sense," Lance said with significant delay.

With newfound determination, they set up camp at a safe distance from the city in anticipation of sundown. Errin forbid herself to think about all the things that could go wrong, but she caught herself brushing over the pommel of her sword with a little too much frequency. Based on the stiffed body language of the others, they were as tense as she was.

After what seemed like forever, the sun vanished behind the horizon and Camelot's bell tower struck sunset, the signal to close the gates for the night.

Errin took a deep breath to calm herself before reaching for her helmet out of instinct. Hesitantly, she tossed the painstakingly crafted item in her hands and let her reflection dance over the polished steel. For as tempting as its anonymity appeared, speed and caution were the driving forces behind this mission's success, and the unneeded piece of armor would only limit her sight and slow her movement. She cut her sentimental dwelling short and stuffed the helmet into her saddlebag.

It was time. And no matter the outcome, she was ready to face all foes that might stand between her and the goal of her mission.

To find the answers to all her lingering questions.

* * *

**(A/N) **Well, at least I managed the update in two weeks. I'm quite happy with this schedule, but we'll see how long I will be able to stick to it. As compensation, you get longer chapters that will probably range between 6 and 10k.

A quick side note on the flashback scene at the beginning: Not every chapter going forward will have one, not because I don't have enough ideas - I have more than I could ever reasonably cram into this - but because I want to at least attempt to fit them into the narrative. Ideally, these scenes either stand in relation to character decisions in the given chapter or shine a different light on events from the previous chapter. This first one isn't too fancy, but it should give you an additional jigsaw piece to Mordred's character. See this as an introduction to a mechanic I will abuse later on.

So long!

**Edit**: An update on line-editing, no major changes.


	4. Magical Item Number 307

– Seven years before The Fall –

Errin was bored beyond compare.

At first, the day had promised to be filled with excitement and much welcomed change from the usual monotony. Her father had told her that two members of the famous group of knights known as the Seven Deadly Sins would visit Camelot, and this news had lightened up Errin's mood with pure ecstasy.

She adored the stories about the Sins her father would tell her, and she had begged for a repetition so often that she knew all their adventures by heart and could recite them word for word. How the Sins were first formed by their Captain, Meliodas, how they were framed for the death of the Great Holy Knight Zaratras, and how they later defeated the by Demon blood controlled Holy Knight Hendrickson with the help of the princess Elizabeth. Errin's favorite story, however, was the one in which the Seven Deadly Sins ended the New Holy War by overcoming the Demon King.

Needless to say, Errin admired the Sins, and she had been dying to meet them for as long as she had first memorized all their names. Escanor might walk among Camelot's highest-ranked Holy Knights, and Merlin was a frequent visitor of the palace's library, but they were busy people with little time to spare for a curious child. Because of that, the prospect of seeing or maybe getting to talk to two members had put her into a state of giddy anticipation.

Only for it to turn out a huge disappointment.

Her father had instructed her to wait outside the throne room, a place she had no reason to enter anyway, and she had promised to behave well and do just that. This, to be fair, granted her the opportunity to see a short, blond man who she instantly recognized as the Dragon's Sin Meliodas accompanied by an elegant, silver-haired woman – Elizabeth – enter the throne room. A few feet behind them floated someone who could only be Fairy King Harlequin.

Transfixed with awe, Errin stared at his beautiful, translucent Fairy wings that caught the light to make rainbows appear. Hues of blue danced over the ornate walls of the hall as Harlequin passed her amidst the gossiping crowd of servants, soldiers, and spectators. Since Errin had never seen a Fairy before – or any members from non-human clans to be exact – the wonderous sight reduced her reaction to an awestruck stare.

But the moment ended far too soon, as the trio entered the throne room, and the richly detailed wooden doors were shut behind them.

That was all.

The Sins and Meliodas in particular had been invited because of Mordred and his 'difficult' behavior during training, and King Arthur had hoped for Meliodas to teach his son a lesson or two. Mordred himself had told Errin this yesterday with an amount of frustration, maybe even disgust that had upset her.

She had noticed his outbursts as well, and she also knew that they at least in part stemmed from the fact that no magical ability seemed to ever manifest in him. And if there was one thing to get the masses talking and wear out the word 'worrisome', it would be the future king's weak talent with magic.

But as much as Errin wanted to understand Mordred in his troubles, right now she was exclusively jealous at him. Because he got the chance to meet the Captain of the Seven Deadly Sins while she was left with a closed door in her face.

Annoyed and still very much bored, Errin rubbed over the delicately sewn hem of her formal red dress. Why did she need to wear this despicable piece of clothing when she wasn't allowed in the presence of the guests in the first place?

As she unroyally scuffed her feet over the pretty marble tiles of the great hallway, Errin considered sneaking upstairs to watch the meeting from the gallery overlooking the throne room but dismissed the idea right away. Her father would be very unhappy if she went against his wishes and spied on other people. And because she didn't want to disappoint her father, Errin instead escaped the noise of the crowd and followed the hallway all the way to the end, where the blind arches were replaced by actual ones and one side opened up to the palace's inner garden.

She liked this place quite a bit and had played hide-and-seek between the hedge mazes with Mordred countless times. And even if Mordred wasn't there to play with her, she hoped to concern her thoughts with something other than the presence and unattainability of two members of the Sins, plus princess Elizabeth.

But when Errin turned around to step out of the hallway and into the garden, she stopped dead in her tracks. On the large field of trimmed grass that occupied the center of the garden sat two girls, both a bit younger than her, and over them towered the huge frame of a Giant.

The primary feeling that washed over Errin was panic, strong enough to drive her back a few steps, back into the shadows of the hallway. Her father had said nothing of a Giant!

But the initial fear quickly gave way to curiosity, and after she had let her heart slow down a bit, Errin further examined the trio in front of her. The two young girls – one with long blond hair, the other with neatly pinned-up brown locks – showed no signs of concern in the presence of the Giant, so there was no reason for Errin to be afraid either. Plus, now that she eyed the Giant more closely, Errin noticed that the female silhouette was a bit small for a full-grown Giant. Her father had told her that Giants were about forty feet tall on average, but this particular one didn't reach half that height.

Errin pondered whether the Giant was the Serpent's Sin Diane, but she wrote the idea off. From what she knew, Diane had brown hair, while this Giant's hair showed more of an orangish color.

As her curiosity peaked and she worried she might burst from the pressure, Errin hopped down the two steps that led to the garden's gravel walkway and closed in on the peculiar miniature Giant.

It was then that she became aware of the massive spear that hovered above the trio and idly spun around its axis, as if to watch over them. Maybe it was. And despite the new surge of unease that overcame her, she continued her careful walk towards the group. Gravel crunched under her feet.

But before any of them took notice of her, the Giant slammed one fist on the earth with enough outrage to cause the ground to rumble, and Errin would have dived for cover, had her feet not turned to concrete.

"Why can't I help you?" the Giant asked in what sounded like a repeated outcry of frustration.

"Because your hands are too big," the brown-haired girl answered. She and the blond were engrossed in weaving wreaths out of the flowers piled up around them, some types of which Errin had never seen before. A half-finished flower crown already rested on the blond girl's head.

"Daddy said you're not supposed to make fun of my size," the Giant whined. Was she a child too? "I'm gonna tell him that you said that, Cynthia, that you made fun of me again."

"Fine," the brown-haired girl – Cynthia – said, far less patient than before. "Then I'll tell him that you didn't behave again and complained the whole time. This is why we don't get to explore the palace – because you'd cause a scene and make daddy look bad."

The whole exchange had gone way past a state of confusion for Errin's ears. From the sound of it, Cynthia and the Giant girl were siblings, but that idea was utterly ridiculous. How on earth were a Giant and a human supposed to have the same father?

And while Errin was still contemplating, and the supposed siblings were still bickering, the blond girl turned her head to look at Errin. She had strikingly green eyes.

"Hello," she said with a wide smile. The single word made Cynthia and the Giant girl snap out of their fight and stare at the newcomer.

Errin had no idea what response to give, and a simple 'hello' didn't make it to her lips, so she blurted out the first thing that came to her mind. "Are you a Giant?"

The Giant girl giggled and sat herself up straighter to make her height more apparent. "I'm Ivy. And I'm half Giant half Fairy," she said solemnly.

If Errin hadn't been confused before, she certainly was now, until understanding dawned on her. Her father had told her of only one instance of marriage between a Fairy and a Giant. Which could only mean one thing…

"Your parents are the Grizzly's and Serpent's Sin!" Errin cried out, quite proud of her deductive performance. When Ivy confirmed her suspicion with a nod, Errin couldn't help but beam.

"Daddy wanted us to visit Camelot with him," Ivy said. "He was invited by the King of Camelot for… something very important, I think. I forgot. Oh, and these are Katrina and my younger sister Cynthia."

Errin stare at the three girls in deepest fascination. By logical conclusion, the presence of Meliodas and Elizabeth suggested that Katrina was their child. Just yesterday, Errin had went out of her way to pick up everything there was to know about the Seven Deadly Sins, and now she had the chance to get first-hand knowledge from their children. It looked like the day would not be boring after all.

"And who are you?" Katrina asked and pushed a strand of hair out of her face. Ivy and Cynthia examined her with the same curiosity.

Suddenly remembering her manners, Errin brushed her dress into a more presentable state.

"My name is Errin," she said with a grin.

* * *

With sundown came a heightened level of tension. Katrina could feel it in every ounce of her body, and the anxiousness enveloped her with a dense blanket under which there was too little oxygen for her to breathe.

They had arrived at the crossroad, the moment of truth that would open them a path to change history and save their families. Or the moment that would nullify all their efforts. If they were caught, or if they were unable to find anything of use, or if – and this possibility was disturbingly plausible – there was no way to alter events in the past, what were they to do then? Fight against Mordred on their own, despite the slim, downright inexistent chances of victory?

Even with the icy claws of fear holding her heart in a fierce grip, Katrina was ready to not only consider this option but run with it. She would put all she had left on the line, no matter what it would amount to. But did the same hold true for the others? Lance and Ivy had agreed to this trip because of her pleading and because the hope of returning the people they loved had pulled them forward, but once this hope died down, their determination might too. And what about Errin? Would she stand against the one person she admired most, the one who was responsible for all these deaths? With nauseating intensity, the images of the dead soldiers of Camelot overcame Katrina to swallow her composure like a black hole.

The gentle touch of a hand on her shoulder brought her back from the depths of her dark thoughts.

"You okay, Katrina?" Lance asked. "If you don't feel well enough, we can put the operation on hold and wait for tomorrow night. Or we try to come up with a plan that doesn't force you to go in there with Errin. If you want me to go with you, just ask."

Guilt clawed at the insides of her gut. Why was she always the iron weight at their feet that held them back?

"No, I'm okay. Really," she ensured. She hated how weak her voice sounded.

"Great, because I think Ivy's gonna snap if she doesn't get to do something soon," Lance said and pointed behind his back. There, Ivy was running in circles as she traced and retraced her steps like a caged animal. Caged by the uncertainty of the outcome that would await them at the end of the night.

"Shouldn't we get going?" Ivy asked without breaking her pace. "We're losing time, and there's almost no light left to see anything. This plan won't work if the guards don't notice the distraction."

"If no one has any objections, I think we're good to go," Lance said with a side glance at Katrina. She didn't plan to disappoint him and gave him a nod that she hoped looked confident. "Good luck everyone then."

Lance gave her shoulder an encouraging squeeze and hurried to catch up to Ivy.

Katrina ignored the trembling in her legs and crossed the distance to Errin. Without exchanging a single word, the two of them turned their backs to the secure hollow that had served as their campsite and approached the city. Its guard lights shined into the night that was becoming murkier by the minute.

To most people, the capital of Camelot was a symbol of grandeur, the incarnation of power humankind had attained in the years following the end of the Holy War. Rebuild from the ground up in only six years, the city dwarfed its southern neighbors in influence and population alike, and even the capital of Orkney with its citadel of marble and alabaster could not compare to the domain of King Arthur. But in the shadows of the night Katrina was intimidated rather than awestruck by the tall frame of the city that grew to fill her field of view with each wavering step she made.

They crossed the plain field in front of Camelot's outer walls unseen, or at least unnoticed enough that the guards on the battlements sounded no alarm. A little out of breath, Katrina leaned into the shadows of the wall constructed with blocks of stone taller than her. Now all they had to do was wait for the agreed signal.

The waiting time turned out shorter than expected. With the thunderous sound of the earth itself cracking open, a stone pillar rose into the night sky, far to the east. Even if the darkness had swallowed the product of earth magic, the ear deafening sound would not have gone by unnoticed. Concerned shouts rang from atop the wall and feet shuffled in panic in an attempt to find the source of the disturbance. The urgency driving the guards intensified as a second earth-made structure built itself out of the ground, closer to the city this time. Slowly, the sounds on the walkway above them died out as all men changed position to investigate the potential threat to the east.

Errin clapped her hands, and Katrina jumped as the metal of her gloves swelled the sound to rise above the wall separating them from the city. No response. Satisfied with the fact that no one remained to care about the minor disturbance, Errin readied herself and gave Katrina a look of encouragement. Responsibility rested on her now.

Katrina closed her eyes and searched for the shining pool of divine light inside of her. Its warmth welcomed her like an old friend. With great care, she tapped into the Goddess magic and was rewarded with the soft tickling of nerves connecting as her wings sprouted from her back. When she opened her eyes, the white feathers of Goddess wings filled her periphery, and she breathed a sigh of relief.

With a little more assurance than before, Katrina bent her knees and kicked off the ground with enough momentum to carry her up and above the wall. The sensation of flying drowned out all other thoughts, and a joyous smile crept up her lips before she could attempt to contain it. Only when a cold breeze brushed over her face and obscured her view with loose strands, did her logical thinking kick back into gear. She fought the urge to rise higher, into the clouds and star-filled sky above, and instead returned to the ground to Errin.

Katrina mustered an apologetic smile and grabbed Errin's hands. With a jolt of exertion, she lifted herself and Errin from the ground and ascended. To Errin's credit, one had to note that she remained quiet, but the frightened look in her eyes spoke volumes about how little she thought of flying. Katrina couldn't blame her for her resentment, but it was a shame nonetheless; she and so many others never got to enjoy the unparalleled feeling of escaping from gravity itself.

Regardless of her excitement, Katrina struggled with the additional weight, and her arms threatened to tear themselves apart. The flight took longer than she would have liked. Sweat ran down her arms, and she was relieved to finally descent on the other side of the wall. Then, a few feet above the ground, she lost hold of Errin's hands. Katrina's heartbeat stumbled, but Errin gracefully landed on her feet, quieter than expected from someone fully armored.

When Katrina dropped down beside her, she still murmured an apology but was hushed by a wordless handwave and a gesture to be silent.

Three-story buildings of waddle and daub lined the deserted street in front of them. In an attempt to make best use of the limited space, the houses overhung their lower floors and blocked out the sky in the process. Katrina's unease heightened, but she had no chance to dwell, as Errin pressed onward, and they followed the street until it crossed ways with an orthogonal road. Without hesitation, Errin turned right and abandoned the crossroad enlightened by oil lamps suspended at the timber piers of the corner buildings. The street ahead, on the other hand, lay in darkness.

Errin lead the way with the confidence of a guide who knew every stone around, never faltering, never rethinking, and all Katrina could do was follow her on her heels. While she had gone to Camelot before, this part of the city was foreign to her, and she would not have recognized anything in the darkness, even if she had remembered these streets.

Time ran forward until Katrina had no way to tell for how long she had been following Errin through the labyrinth of Camelot's alleyways. They didn't encounter a single soul on their way. No patrols went about their duties, no children had snuck outside past their bedtime, no drunkards leaned half collapsed against the wall of a building. Only silence and empty streets for company.

After Katrina had stumbled two separate times and had convinced herself to be going in circles, the houses on both sides lifted to make room for a small plaza. And on the opposite side of the square of paving stone stood Merlin's home and research facility.

Katrina had visited this building a few times, and she well remembered the detailed façade with its rich ornaments embedded into the stone structure. The pale moonlight turned the gargoyles depicting various real and mythical creatures into even more hideous monstrosities, and the carved-in Demons and Afancs seemed about to jump out of their sockets to roam free with nasty, grotesque faces. Over the two stories rose a rounded tower that dwarfed the buildings around and enabled a great view all the way to the palace of Camelot.

Unlike in Katrina's memories, the structure lacked a warm welcoming.

Carefully, Errin approached the front door, but no magical barrier or any other form of defense mechanism prevented her from putting one hand on the doorknocker. Katrina sneaked forward and joined Errin on the doorstep. To her surprise, she found the door not only unlocked but ajar. A gentle push from Errin made the door swing inwards and allowed them to enter.

The sight they faced was one of pure chaos.

The experiment table at the center of the room was hacked to pieces. The countless bottles and test tubes once resting on top of it lay scattered across the room, many of them broken so that their content spilled into bubbling puddles. Merlin's books had been thrown out of their shelves to join the shambles on the floor.

Katrina made a step backwards. This was worse than she could have imagined, too much for her to handle. All she wanted was to get out of this room, out of this town, and leave the horrific sight and its implications as far behind as possible. Errin had told them that Merlin had disappeared, but she had mentioned nothing of the fight that had taken place here.

Errin's voice brought her back to reality and restrained the panic. "This will take longer than I expected." She sounded magically calm for the situation they were faced with. "You go upstairs and see if there's anything of use. I'll search through Merlin's studies here. The faster we work, the earlier we can clear out. I doubt they'll leave all this valuable stuff unguarded for long."

Two conflicting feelings fought for dominance inside of Katrina. On the one hand she was afraid to split from Errin and face the horrors that would await her upstairs alone, but she was just as thankful for the excuse to escape the main room. The urge to flee won, and Katrina stormed to the back of the room and the set of stairs located there.

On the second floor she was presented with two doors and a small wooden ladder leading further upstairs and into the tower that housed more of Merlin's experiments. Including those of living substance.

Not eager to examine that can of worms, Katrina chose the door on her right-hand side. The room beyond appeared to be Merlin's personal chamber and was occupied by another bookshelf and a bed in the far distant corner. Whoever had searched through the room downstairs had also raged in this one; Merlin's research notes covered every inch of the wooden floor.

Disheartened, Katrina picked up one loose piece of parchment and turned it in her hands a few times.

_Field Research on Inter-Clan Dynamics_ was written on the front side. While scanning other loose papers in her proximity, Katrina found numerous other texts that belonged to the same research. Soon she held a large stack of paper in her hands that detailed Merlin's experience with the five main clans and their relations with each other.

One section that caught her attention focused in great detail on the characteristics of Fairy-human-marriage. Appalled, Katrina shoved the stack of paper away. She respected Merlin and her abilities, but the Mage knew no scruples when it came to using the individuals around her as living test subjects, regardless of their willingness. And Katrina was in no way eager to read through Merlin's collected thoughts on the relationship of Lance's parents.

The other texts and books in the room likewise failed to bring her closer to her goal. While she found plenty of information on _The History of Britannia_, _Curses and How to Break Them, The Manipulation of Life Essence_, and all kinds of other topics, nothing related to time magic and how to use it.

Frustrated and tired because of the late hour, Katrina left Merlin's room to instead focus on the opposite door. The wood around the destroyed lock was broken and bend. Someone had tried and succeeded to enter Gaius' room by force.

Gaius. According to Errin, he had disappeared alongside Merlin.

The room on the other side of the door was spartanly furnished with an unmade bed and a small chest that had also been ransacked with the clothes from inside churned up and spilled on the floor.

Katrina was losing hope. Nothing here resembled a book or even a note that could contain magic spells. If Errin was unable to find anything, they would have come here for nothing.

With all force of motivation used up, Katrina collapsed onto Gaius' bed. She wondered what had happened to him, and at the same time she was afraid to find out. Her voice of reason told her that he was in all likelihood dead. Dead like her parents, dead like Ivy's family, dead like they would soon be if they could not find a way to defeat Mordred.

The cushions ate away her strength to continue, and Katrina fantasized about the chance to shut out all the demons outside and forget them in favor of a dreamless sleep. But the demons did not only lurk outside.

Absentmindedly, Katrina let her hand trace the pillow next to her head and relished its softness. The blankets smelled of parchment and too many nights spent studying in the light of a candle. Surely no one would bat an eye if she drifted off for a few moments…

A sudden ache in her index finger tore Katrina out of her tiredness. The cut wasn't deep enough to draw blood, but the unexpectedness made her fingertip throb with distant pain all the same.

She sat herself up and moved the pillow aside to see what hid beneath. The cause of her pain revealed itself to be a gemstone, forged into a rhombus-shaped crystal, and its deep purple facets reflected the dim light of the room. A piece of paper, not larger than her thumb, was attached to it with a cord. As the curiosity overpowered her fatigue, Katrina unfolded the paper.

_Merlin's magical item number 307, «Time Crystal»_

_Do not use thoughtlessly!_

_(That means you, Gaius)_

Katrina gawked at the paper, unable to comprehend what she was reading. The handwriting matched Merlin's scribbled style, and the last line was an obvious jab at Gaius' all too curious nature. But the words 'Time Crystal' had an awful ring to them, not to mention the warning.

On the other hand, what if this magical item was exactly what they were looking for? Could they be this lucky?

Katrina turned the paper around a few more times, but found no instruction. And why would there be? Merlin had to have known perfectly well how to handle the item, and Gaius was called out to _not_ use it, so Merlin had seen no need for a guideline or a manual.

Frustrated, Katrina tapped the crystal with one finger. Nothing. No glowing, no magic words appearing in thin air, just a dead stone.

But a sting from somewhere deep in her chest told her more lurked within the item than what it looks led to believe. A presence, equal parts powerful and tempting.

Her mind set, Katrina closed her hand around the crystal and left the room to return downstairs. Even if the stone turned out useless, she saw no harm in taking it with her. At the very least, her find was pretty to look at.

The crystal weighed heavy in her hands on her way down the spiraled stairs.

"You've found anything yet?" Errin asked from amidst multiple piles of books as she hopelessly tried to get them in order.

"Maybe," Katrina replied and settled next to Errin. She opened her hand to allow Errin a better look at the crystal, but her eyes crossed the item for less than a second before they returned to the massive encyclopedia in her hands.

"It is called 'Time Crystal'," Katrina tried again while Errin turned the pages of her book. "That might just be what we're looking for." As an answer, Katrina received a half-hearted murmur.

Errin was so occupied with her search that she hardly took notice of anything that went on around her, including what might turn out to be the solution to their problems.

Without disturbing Errin further, Katrina tossed the crystal in her palm. This wasn't the first magical item of Merlin's she had seen by any means. Ivy had one of her own, the Shrinking Bracelet that allowed her to turn human sized, and Merlin had shown her a few other ones before, ranging from a cursed ring to a cylinder able to store magic until the end of time. And since Katrina found solace in the strict but simple rules of higher magic and spells when everything else was snatched out of her control, she had further been allowed to practice a few incantations under Merlin's guidance. Not that her parents had been fond of the idea of leaving their daughter in the care of a knowledge-hungry experimentalist.

One spell in particular came to her mind, a spell that had allowed her to alter her perception of time to process happenings faster, and while the incantation was unable to manipulate time itself, it was a nifty trick nonetheless. She had never managed to hold up the spell for more than a few second, but if her memory didn't play tricks on her, the incantation began with _atemoto tardureshi_ followed by a string of conditions and specifications.

The words had barely crossed her thoughts when the crystal pulsated and then spun around in her palm. Katrina caught herself in time to spare the item an untimely tumble and marveled at the simplified clock that had appeared in golden lines on the crystals surface. Its hands moved forward slower than they should.

When Katrina looked up to make sure Errin was seeing the same thing and it wasn't her crumbling sanity that had produced the apparition, she gasped. Errin was turning a page of her book with a slowness that would draw the action out for minutes.

That was all the conformation she needed.

Not only did the Time Crystal work, it amplified its user's time magic to an insane degree. Never before had she upheld the spell for more than a few heartbeats, but here she was, able to move while the rest of the room was stuck in a time vortex whose flow she had reduced to a fraction of its normal speed, with no sign to indicate that it would return to normal any time at all.

And Katrina had no idea how to stop the spell she had afflicted on her surroundings.

* * *

The silence was about to wreck her nerves.

After Ivy had caused a loud enough commotion to wake a sleeping Tyrant Dragon, a group of Holy Knights had advanced out of Camelot's main gate to investigate the source of the aggressive earth manipulation. They had yet to catch up to them, but it was only a matter of time. Time that was running out.

"I'm sure they're already way past any trouble," Lance interrupted her train of thought. He was sitting on the branch of a mighty oak tree, close to eye level.

He had a reason to suggest that Katrina and Errin were the cause for her restlessness – they had been away long enough to worry that something had happened –, but something else troubled her, a sense of foreboding or a dark presence that kept her on edge.

And it was oh so easy to turn to the one cause Ivy could pinpoint. "Ever thought about how easily Errin could rat us out if she wanted to?"

"Of course I did. But I like to tell myself that she wouldn't have gone through the trouble of leading us to Camelot only to then turn on us and hand us over to Mordred, who's hopefully still rotting in Liones. And it doesn't seem like she's all that fond of Camelot's council at the moment either, so she has no reason to betray us to them. You've known her for longer. Do you think she'd put Katrina in danger? In all honesty?"

The answer Ivy wanted to give was not the one she knew to be true. "No, probably not. Not until she'll have to stand face to face with Mordred and choose."

"I guess that's as much as we can hope for," Lance said, but a shadow of doubt remained as he buried his nails into the bark of the branch. "At this point, we have to trust that she'll bring Katrina back safely."

"As long as they hurry up to get here. Otherwise we'll be found by these stupid Holy Knights. And _then_ we'll have a real problem. Especially when they are loyal to Mordred."

"Lucky for us that Mordred doesn't have too many fans among the knights of Camelot, not like Arthur did. If there's one thing the council was useful for, it's how nicely they cut him off of any sort of resources."

"So instead of sending men against Liones he used a horde of Colossai, which are around ten times more difficult to take down. Now if that isn't useful…"

Lance chose to combat her sarcasm with logic. "Fair enough point, but we haven't come across any of them since The Fall, and it's not exactly difficult to spot a sixty-feet mountain coming your way. Either Mordred is saving them for later, or he's gotten rid of them already. And the Round Table only has twelve members, him included, so as long as they don't gang up on us all at once we should be fine."

"Like the time I had to save you from getting cut in half by Nashtar?" Ivy asked, which shut down the conversation.

Thanks to a useful set of powers inherited from their parents, they could indeed take on most Holy Knights Camelot had at its disposal – the increasing number of knights without magical abilities only boosted their chances – but that was no reason to go easy on them. And the longer they hid away in silence, the more likely a confrontation became.

Then, Ivy identified the source of unrest that had been nagging her this whole time. The silence. The silence was too complete, too absolute to be natural. No crickets or other insects accompanied the night, not even the faint song of a nightingale sounded through the forest, even though Ivy was sure to have seen one earlier.

Something was very wrong.

Lance stirred a second before she did as the stars above darkened from one moment to the next. At first, Ivy explained the occurrence away with clouds passing overhead, but clouds would have blocked the stars in clusters instead of dimming all of them at once. Worse yet, the darkened sky was followed by crackling and rustling, carried towards them by stronger gusts. And right before realization hit her, the disgusting smell of plant life turning to ash reached her nose.

A fire. And it was close.

Ivy reacted without thinking, grabbed Lance with her free hand, and ran for dear life. Her senses, increased by the rush of adrenalin, directed her away from where the air reeked of smoke and the flakes of burned trees.

When she had been younger, nightmares of her home burning to the ground had plagued her because of the horrible story Ban had told her of how a Red Demon had destroyed the Fairy King's Forest. And as each breath of air tasted more like ash, all her childhood fears of fire returned to consume her.

Ivy felt the flames licking at her heels.

She was panicking.

Her feet pushed forward in a desperate attempt to get as far away from the cauldron of heat as possible before the inferno pulled her into its depths. She no longer ordered her muscles, instinct had taken control, and her brain had turned a wasteland where the only rule was run or die.

"Ivy! Ivy, listen to me!" Lance's voice seeped into her clouded mind, and while she never eased her steps, she shut out the rattling in her ears to grasp his follow-up explanation. "This is no coincidence. This fire was set up on purpose, you hear? If we blindly run away, we'll just end up running directly into the Holy Knights who are waiting for us with open arms. Do you understand this?"

She hated him for how calm if raspy his voice sounded, while she had enabled her fears to take complete control of her. He had a point, of course he did, like he always did.

"Any clever ideas then?" Ivy asked while she altered directions to move parallel to the expanding wall of fire. Flames crawled up the tree trunks to devour bark, leaves, and any creature unfortunate enough to be trapped within the hellfire.

"Keep moving sideways," Lance shouted to make himself heard over the fire's steady increase in volume. "And hope they haven't split up because they predicted us to do that."

"They can't know that it's us. For all they know they've only witnessed an aggressive Giant on the hunt." Lance's lack of a response proved that he doubted their luck in this regard.

The heat increased by the minute, and so did the wind. Inflamed by the gale, the firewall rose higher, above the tallest pines. Sparks travelled longer distances and set the foliage on fire faster. But it was the dense smoke that knocked out her ability to breathe, much less navigate. Every root obscured by cinders might be the death trap to end them.

Lance coughed within Ivy's grip, and dizziness swayed her vision until it rode carousel, and she couldn't tell up from down anymore.

Finally, the trees decreased in population, and they reached the outskirts of the forest burning to pieces behind them. The dark outline of Camelot's capital stood out against the star-sprinkled sky. And on the plain between them and the city, a mere hundred yards away, waited four Holy Knights with drawn weapons.

"Should've gone the other sideways," Lance mumbled weakly.

With both their breaths running short, neither Lance nor Ivy were in a state to fight four trained opponents. In the best case, Errin and Katrina would return to aid them before the knights got the better of them. A flimsy hope.

One knight gave commands to the rest of his group with clipped gestures, but the crackling of the forest fire drowned his words. They did, however, motivate one of the mounted knights to turn around and race towards Camelot. To call for reinforcements if Ivy had to bet.

She weighed up whether she should leave the knights in the dark about her identity. Sure, if these soldiers were simple leftovers from King Arthur's division of Holy Knights – formerly led by Escanor –, revealing herself as the daughter of the Fairy King would rid them of all their imminent problems. But what if they weren't? If they stood behind Mordred, Ivy and Lance might as well call this their funeral.

She wasn't going to bet on their luck.

One last plan emerged in the back of her mind and quickly turned into the best terrible idea her dehydrated brain could bring forth. The knights had yet to notice Lance's presence, as the Giant they were faced with drew all their attention. She might not escape their blades – but she could make sure Lance did.

Ivy took a few steps backwards and steadied her position. In a motion practiced countless times, she pulled her arm behind her head.

Lance realized what dawned on him a heartbeat before she continued her movement, but his struggles proved futile against her iron grip. "Ivy?! Ivy, are you completely INSANE?!"

She didn't bother with an answer.

To the shock of the knights in front of her, Ivy sprinted forward, gaining momentum as she went, before her arm rushed forward and, and she released the grip of her hand at the peak of its movement.

Lance's silhouette disappeared between the stars. If Ivy's plan worked out, he would land safely within the walls of Camelot and meet up with Katrina there. With Lance out of harm's way, Ivy had optimized their chance of making it through this night alive, hopefully with a plan to continue.

Simple strategy. Lance should be proud of her.

She tightened her grip around Gideon's hilt and readied herself for the fight. And even though her heartbeat raced towards collapse with unnerving speed, she managed to brush aside the exhaustion of her muscles and the aching of her lungs.

But only one of the Holy Knights stepped closer. Their white cape trailed behind them as the wind got hold of it. The unease she had felt before amplified a hundredfold, and Ivy squinted at the dark but familiar figure.

As the knight moved closer still, the raging forest fire behind Ivy at long last shined light onto their facial features to reveal their identity. With the deep purple eyes she saw in her nightmares _he_ looked up at her, and a disgustingly sympathetic smile curled his lips.

The predator had found its prey.

* * *

To say that the impact was painless would have been a flat and exceptionally poorly put-together lie.

When Lance's bones snapped back into place, waves of agony accompanied each jolt deserving of the description hell on earth. As for the upside, he no longer had to worry about the lethal smoke he had pulled into his lungs because _all _air had been pressed out of his body when he had hit the unforgiving surface of Camelot's street.

Stupid, stupid, noble Ivy.

Sure, Lance hadn't looked forward to a quarrel with those knights, not with the awful battle conditions in mind, but he hadn't wished to become a throwing ball either. When he had played catch with Ivy in the past, he had posed as the other player – not the tossed-around object, for the sake of the Celestial Realm!

With all his might, Lance drew in a long breath of oxygen-heavy air. His throat burned, and when he raised a hand to the nexus of fresh pain, he was horrified to see the mangled state of his fingers, with each joint dislocated into what looked like extremely painful directions. The pain receptors below his elbows had overcharged, so there was no feeling to back up the estimate.

Thankfully, his advanced healing fixed up his essential organs without trouble and moved over to the wounds of lesser severity. Once Lance had made sure that the muscles in his hands were knitted back together so that he could reach for his weapons without dropping them in the process, he made an effort to lift himself up from the spot of his uncomfortable touchdown.

He had to get back to Ivy, that much was set in stone, but if he headed there unprepared, he would only get them both killed. Instead, he could persuade Errin into assisting him, but first he would have to find her. Not an easy task with his sense for direction knocked out of him because of his unwanted airborne trip.

Oh, these beautiful odds.

The street he stood on was fairly wide, aligned with well-build houses of stone and plaster, the type of which found near the center of the city. To his right, the street continued for a good hundred yards before it disappeared into the dark and out of view. To his left, however, orbs of light gave a little comfort to the street in the form of the oil lamps that the craftsmen of Camelot had popularized.

He followed the light like a confused moth, a comparison that fit him a little too well. A short walk later, a landmark he did recognize greeted him.

Camelot's main market plaza stretched out in front of him, a gigantic open circle of cobblestone. The late hour prevented merchants or stall keepers from occupying the space, but as soon as the sun would rise, the plaza would turn into a crowded epicenter of business, where every good no matter how outlandish was bound to find a customer with the needed taste. Anything of resemblance Liones had to offer was small by comparison.

At the center of the market sat enthroned the monument in remembrance of the Holy War.

As Lance had oftentimes been told, the Demon Clan had seized Camelot in the early days of the New Holy War, and from that point forward, the city had served as the Ten Commandments' stronghold. Most of the city had fallen victim to the Demons' path of destruction. Many inhabitants, and even the king himself, had lost their lives. Only through their combined efforts, had the Seven Deadly Sins defeated Demon King and saved the remaining people of Camelot. This monument had been added to the capital's architectural design during the rebuilding process and watched over the market plaza ever since.

Tiny-lettered names, each representing a lost life those left behind mourned over, had been carved into the pedestal of the monument, and many more would cover the stone had there been someone left to remember them. Lance swallowed, but the acerbic taste on his tongue remained. One day he might see his father's name on a memorial like this, buried under a flood of tiny letters. A monument to remind the following generations of The Fall and the lives it had cost, of people who had been swept away from one day to the next.

As his gaze became unseeing, and the names turned into an intangible mess of lines, Lance forced his eyes to move and focus on the monument's heart instead: A life-sized bronze statue of the Captain of the Sins, Meliodas. Or rather, the artist's poor interpretation of him.

Given his small size, it didn't come as a surprise that the statue was in fact taller than its real-life counterpart, and the stonemason had designed the statue's expression with nothing but characterless seriousness in mind, to an almost hilarious effect if one had met the real Meliodas.

_The people of Camelot honor the Seven Deadly Sins for their bravery in the New Holy War_ read a bronze sign at the statue's feet. Someone had placed a handful half-dried flowers next to it.

The longer Lance stared at the monument, the more his right hand trembled. Unfair, unjust, plain deceit. Camelot's gratitude had hardly lasted twenty-five years before their crown prince had murdered the Sins in cold blood.

He couldn't bear to look at the misrepresentation, _the caricature_, of Meliodas for any longer, and so, Lance stormed off and fled the scene.

Because the market had reestablished his sense of direction, he knew which road to follow in order to find Merlin's lab. Ivy's desperate situation broke back into his mind with full force, and the urgency pushed him to hasten his steps. How much time he had allowed to pass by? The delay had lasted too long in any case.

When Lance arrived at Merlin's laboratory, he had banned the encounter with the memorial from his thoughts. On the other side of the agape door, Errin kneeled on the floor, buried beneath volumes upon volumes of spell books.

"What are you doing here?" she snapped after she had eased the clutch around her sword.

Lance avoided the hassle to deal with her useless questions and chose to propose one himself. "Where's Katrina?"

Errin blinked a few times, as though his question had reminded her of something, and looked around the room. Her brows furrowed, and she made an irritated 'huh' sound. "That's weird."

"Don't tell me you lost her." He no longer bothered to contain his frustration. "You went out of your way to go with her, when I should have been the one to look after her! We don't have time for this, Ivy needs our help and _fast_!

"I haven't lost her, she was right here," Errin said and reached out for something Lance could not see.

The air in front of her wavered in a way that suggested something amidst the book stacks tried to conceal itself with a defective invisibility spell. Lance squinted at the blurry figure. But only after he focused on the abnormality for a few seconds did he make sense of what he was looking at. What he had first thought to be an illusion brought forth by his deoxygenated senses, revealed itself as Katrina. And she moved so impossibly fast that Lance's brain failed to process her presence, let alone come up with an explanation as to the why and the how.

Even if he had known a way to help, he was too busy with questioning his sanity to do anything of use. The moment stretched on and the seconds ticked down, but neither Lance nor Errin made a move until the bizarre occurrence slowed to a halt to reveal Katrina as she stared at them with unfiltered terror. Her fists clenched something that she could not have hold tighter if it were a lifeline.

Lance found his words the fastest, although they lacked the precision of well-used speech. "What the – Am I seeing things? How on…?"

Katrina gave no reply; she showed no sign to indicate that she had heard him at all. The panic in her face had made room for blankness, but Lance couldn't look away from her eyes. Darkness had swallowed the white, and where her green irises should have shone, pitch-black pools of shadows reigned supreme. The darkness spread from Katrina's eyes over her skin in fine, circular lines and formed marks pulsating with twisted energy of obsidian and purple. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound escaped her lips; the dark magic had stolen her voice.

The moment before Katrina's entire face drowned in black lines, when Lance thought the calamity to be inevitable, her body was racked with death throes. Invisible forces tore and ripped and pulled her, dark puppet masters with darker intentions, feasting on fear and magic. Lance couldn't move. Then the shaking stopped, and her form went rigid. In a matter of a heartbeat, the darkness curled back into its source behind Katrina's eyes.

The emerald had not yet returned when she went limp and tumbled to the floor.

* * *

**Edit:** I reedited some sections and added a little foreshadowing.


	5. Confrontation

– A few days before The Fall –

The distinct sound of metal touching metal echoed loudly over the castle's inner courtyard as swords connected once, twice, three times, followed by a short moment to breathe.

Lance used the pause to collect his thoughts, before his opponent came rushing at him, first with a predictable uppercut, then with a broad swing from left to right that he anticipated from the way his opponent shifted his stance slightly in preparation for the hit. In a well-studied display of coordination, Lance blocked both hits, before he used his opponent's momentum against him as he spun out of reach of the follow-up strike and landed a tab on the other combatant's armor plate protecting his side.

The retaliatory attack was a series of heavy blows that made Lance's arms ache when he deflected their force. With no means to counter, Lance retreated under the barrage; the low strike with his secondary weapon met nothing but air. He tried to escape from his unfavorable position with a series of sidesteps, but one well-timed slash cut the undertaking short. Satisfied with having Lance forced into a corner, the fellow knight backed away to put the duel on hold another time.

"You're really improving, Lance, that was fantastic!" someone called out. Lance's attention broke away from the fight and towards Katrina, who was approaching them with a big smile made to rival the sun.

The praise enticed him to return the smile, and he lowered his swords to properly greet Katrina, in hindsight a foolish move.

"Watch your stance, Lancelot," his sparring partner, Percival, said, as he knocked away Lance's feet from under him, and the back of his head made an acquaintance with the unfriendly paving stone of the training yard. Lance raised his hands in surrender as Percival brought the tip of his claymore to his throat.

"Do you think your head will grow back after it is cut off?" Percival asked in what Lance hoped to be curiosity rather than outright mockery.

"No, probably not. Though you have to realize why I haven't tested it out yet," Lance retorted dryly which resulted in hearty laughter from Percival.

With little effort, he pulled Lance to his feet with one hand. Not for the first time, Lance cursed his weak half-Fairy physique; a stunt like that would amount to nothing other than a dislocated shoulder on his part. Katrina, who had watched the exchange unfold with sweet joy, finally reached them and let herself be trapped in a bearhug by her cousin, one that could have snapped her spine in half if Percival chose so.

"Is there something the matter or did you just want to see me demolish the crown prince of Liones?" Lance asked Katrina after Percival released her, and the latter to burst out laughing again.

"You seem to forget the part where I was triumphantly standing over your poor remains," Percival said, and made full use of his miraculous talent to not make his words sound arrogant in the slightest.

Lance sighed in overplayed frustration. "Why did I have to trade one physical abuser for another? I originally wanted to become a Holy Knight to get away from Ivy, and now I get punished with this?!"

"Maybe Lady Ivy will pose more of a worthy foe than you do. I shall challenge her to a duel the next time she visits."

"Oh, she'll undoubtedly crush you, trust me on this."

"Speaking of Ivy," Katrina interjected their banter before it could go further off rails. "That's what I wanted to tell you. Her parents are going to meet up with the rest of the Sins here in Liones in a few days. Dad told me. Which means we'll get to see all of them sooner than we thought!" The excitement in Katrina's voice was unmistakable; she was no doubt happy to meet up with Cynthia.

"Excellent news!" Percival exclaimed. "Then I get to convince myself of Lady Ivy's ferociousness in combat in a few days already."

"Did Meliodas say anything on why the Sins are gathering?" Lance asked Katrina. He saw no need to address Percival's comment that had caused him to internally make a face.

"No, nothing," Katrina replied, before overthinking his question. "But now that you mention it, it's weird that they would all meet up without a serious reason."

The worry that overshadowed Katrina's eyes would have been obvious to a blind person and did nothing to comfort Lance in the slightest. On the contrary, he imagined the facets of Katrina's emerald eyes to have turned into black lines crawling around on their own in her iris. He himself had never seen Katrina snap, but he vaguely remembered that there had been an incident that had escalated into his aunt, Diane, getting extremely, extraordinarily furious. And _that _had been a scary sight to see.

"I'm sure it's nothing," Lance said in an attempt to sound reassuring. "They probably just wanna catch up with what they've all been doing since last the met. It'll be nice to see Aura again, and I'm sure you'll have a lot to talk about with Cynthia. So, best we don't worry and just enjoy the opportunity."

Katrina nodded, but the concern in her expression persisted.

"Lance, if all pressing matters have been discussed, shall we then resume training?" Percival said and enforced his stance on the matter with a swing of his sword hand. "It will be crucial to be in top form when I face your cousin in a duel to the expiration of the inferior combatant's honor."

"Sure, haven't been beaten enough today," Lance said ironically, before waving a half-hearted goodbye at Katrina.

As he concentrated his futile efforts on countering Percival's relentless onslaught of hits this time, Lance succeeded in the unthinkable and broke through Percival's offensive and defensive patters all at once. One evasive turn and a feinted strike to the knees was all it took. But Lance hesitated to capitalize on the opening, which bought Percival enough time to reestablish his guard and knock the sword out of Lance's right hand. For a moment all that could be heard were their rattling breaths as their brains caught up to their reflexes.

Until Percival lowered his claymore, this time for good. "I appreciate the effort to save me the misery of defeat by your untrained hands, but if this were a real fight, I hope you would not have shied away from dealing the killing blow. I need to be able to count on you when we'll eventually lock weapons with someone who doesn't share your reluctance."

Lance picked up his lost weapon and used the excuse to avoid Percival's glare. "I don't plan to kill anyone. Nor do I plan to watch someone else die in front of me."

"We are Holy Knights, sworn protectors of those who are born without the power to protect themselves. There might come a moment where you will be forced to choose."

He knew that – and to cling onto any other belief was childish. "Then it will be my choice. But I'll still try my damn hardest to make sure it won't come down to it."

* * *

Katrina opened her eyes to the worried expressions of Lance and Errin as they bend over her and incessantly nudged her shoulders.

Lance breathed a heavy sigh of relief. "Oh, thank heavens," he murmured but continued to scrutinize her intensely. "What. Exactly. _Happened back there_?" He laid emphasis on every word before his distress took over and his voice lingered just shy of screaming.

As an answer, Katrina opened her fist and presented the Time Cristal to them, that had reverted to its harmless stone-self; both the clock and the light apparitions had disappeared. Lance's confused expression only deepened, and Errin raised a brow in demand of an explanation.

"This," Katrina started a bit warily, "is Merlin's «Time Crystal» and it's the solution to all our problems. Because this thing can multiply any time-related spell to the point where, I think, it grants the one who uses it complete control over time."

"Okay," Lance said slowly as he chewed on the information. "But then why did you turn all demonic possession on us after you made this thing stop whatever it was doing before?"

Katrina blinked a few times. Now she was the one to struggle with puzzlement. "I did?"

As she attempted to sit up – she failed to remember how she had ended up in her sprawled position between Merlin's bookstacks – Katrina's arm resigned its duty, and she toppled into an uncomfortable slouch, swaying back and forth like a boat in a wind-lashed current. The minimal movement had feasted on her reserves, and exhaustion weighted her down further. The leather binding of the book next to her suddenly appeared to be the perfect replacement for a pillow.

"Yes, you did." Lance's voice reached her through the blurriness of her ears that seemed to have turned into cotton. "So badly that I thought I'd end up being pierced by black tentacles or something. And trust me if I say, it wasn't a pleasant experience."

"Maybe this crystal was messing with her magical energy," Errin suggested. She managed to contain her bewilderment a lot better than Lance did. "I don't know that much about magic spells, but maybe it has this effect on her by design or requires a certain payment from the one who uses it. It doesn't really matter, anyways. We've wasted too much time here already, so we better get going."

A thought crossed Katrina's slowly operating mind, and she turned to Lance in irritation. "What are you even doing here Lance, didn't you want to stick with Ivy?"

"That's the thing." The chasm between his brows deepened. "We were ambushed by Holy Knights and… Ivy got me out of danger at her own expense. We can't waste any more time to look for other magical short-cuts. She –" Apprehension drowned his mind until he was too afraid to continue.

"It's settled then," Errin said, her emotions hidden behind a blank mask. She rose to her feet and extended a hand to lift Katrina up, and she gratefully accepted the offer.

In a matter of moments, they were out and about on the street, and Merlin's lab disappeared behind a corner – none of them had thought to close the door.

"Do you remember who it was that attacked you?" Errin asked while she marched forward at a breakneck pace on the verge of running. Katrina needed all her energy to keep up as she panted for breath. And still, their way through Camelot's streets and squares and alleyways was taking too much time, time that could be the decisive factor between Ivy's life and death.

"Four Holy Knights, most likely Camelot. But one of them retreated to get backup," Lance answered, his voice sick with concern and regret. "I didn't recognize any of them, if that's what you hope for."

The cool night air slowly cleared her mind, and Katrina's thoughts ran to the only solution she could think of, the only way she had to save Ivy. She knew she could make it, and the others had to realize it was the best shot they had, by far. She stopped abruptly and waited for Lance and Errin to turn around as they became aware of the absence of her steps.

"I'll use the crystal again," Katrina said with all the conviction she could gather.

"No, you won't," Errin cut in, her voice even yet demanding. "We don't know what it does to you or where your limits lie on using this thing. It's not worth the risk."

Katrina doubted her ears worked properly and that they hadn't turned into cotton for good. Ivy's life was on the line, and Errin still argued that it was _not worth the risk_? Would she let her die solely because of her limited understanding on how the crystal worked?

Hopeful to receive more support from Lance, Katrina turned to him, only to find his face to be a mess of conflicting emotions. She couldn't believe it. Where they all blind to the opportunity that presented itself to them? Taken aback by their unwillingness, she rocked back and forth while Lance fought an internal battle with himself only to then, finally, give her the tiniest of nods.

Errin, who had watched the silent exchange, stepped forward, her emotionless mask replaced by cold anger. "No, you DON'T!"

But by the time Errin grabbed her shoulder, Katrina had already phrased the magic words _atemoto tardureshi _in a whisper and let herself be consumed by the brightness that followed her words. One of the hands of the clock struck one, and then they stood motionless. However, much to her surprise, Errin's firm grip on her shoulder lost nothing of its intensity, even after she was certain the spell had taken effect.

"What are you thinking?!" Errin screamed in her ear, only that her words were not slowed down to a ridiculous level as they were supposed to be.

Katrina looked past Errin to see Lance blinking, or at least attempting to, because the motion was stretched to infinity, and his eyelids never fully reached the closing point. And still Errin was unaffected by the bending of time, and forcefully shook Katrina as she kept forbidding her to use the Time Crystal. Thereby ignoring the fact that the crystal's magic was long in effect to slow down time around them.

"It works on you, too!" Katrina interrupted Errin's angry lecture and gave her time to examine her surroundings and the fact that Lance was still trapped in the middle of blinking.

After a few beats, Errin caught herself and assessed the predicament she had unwillingly become a part of. "You shouldn't have done it, it's not safe to use this thing."

She slowly – at least slow by their measurement of time – let go of Katrina's shoulder, in expectation of the time incantation to lose its effect on her, but she remained entangled in it.

"Can you get him into the spell as well?" Errin asked with a nod towards Lance.

"I don't think I can," Katrina said reluctantly. "Last time I used the crystal, I tried to interact with you, touch you to get you to notice me, but you didn't even realize I was there. I think this time it only worked on you because you were close enough to be within the effect range. I'd have to stop this spell and cast a new one."

She kept quiet on the fact that she wasn't certain she _could_ do that. The crystal had done something to her when she had used it last time, something she had no memories of – Lance had called it 'demonic possession'. These words were enough to make her anxious, and her gut clumped whenever she imagined the actions behind them. She reminded herself to breathe and focus. Nothing made her more vulnerable than dread. The aftereffects of her last time spell still tormented her in the form of exhaustion and a clouded mind and memory. As it stood, Katrina had no way of telling, whether or not she could take a hit like that a second time.

Thankfully, Errin didn't ask her to. "We don't have time for this, we can pick him up later."

Without as much as a second thought, Errin lived by her words and hurried onward, her fingers restlessly fidgeting with the hilt of her sword. Katrina followed her on her heels after she had spared the extra second to look at Lance one last time, who had finished blinking and now stared to where Katrina and Errin had been just a moment ago.

She hoped they would get to Ivy in time.

But then again, time had turned into an instrument Katrina could manipulate at will, and if necessary, she wouldn't hesitate to make use of it. No matter what costs she would have to bring forth.

* * *

Ivy internally cursed when she slipped on the uneven ground and needed to fight for balance for a moment that could have been her end if Mordred hadn't been toying with her so much. Reluctance was carved into his features as he reevaluated his own stance; so far, he had excelled in drawing the fight out for as long as possible. Until fate would take matters out of his hands.

While she moved her feet towards less dangerous ground texture, Ivy punished his reluctance with a barrage of rocks. In the southern plains of Britannia, the earth was different from what she was used to, heavier and less willing to form structures outside of its bedrock of chalk and limestone. With the peat soil of the Fairy King's Forest, she had been able to condense the earth into precise recreations of her imagination, but here, the rocks she sent forward were too porous to deal damage. Mordred waved them aside with his sword the way he would nasty insects, unworthy of his efforts.

The only upside Ivy had in this fight, was the fact that Mordred had ordered his followers to stay out of it. Whether that action was born out of ignorance or something else, Ivy couldn't allow herself to waste time thinking about.

Mordred moved closer and turned his forward momentum into a sideways swing of his sword that Ivy deflected with Gideon's hilt, before she countered the attack with a blow that only struck air as Mordred evaded the hit. Frustration caused Ivy to cough out a haggard breath; the aftereffects of barely escaping the forest fire still slowed her movements.

Worse yet, before any blow had been dealt, her Shrinking Bracelet had developed a mind of its own to cast its magic against her will. And from that point onward, Mordred had denied her the opening to fondle around with the traitorous object. All her senses where occupied with the task to keep herself alive for as long as possible because victory was so far out of reach it might as well be nonexistent.

All her thoughts ceased to exist when Mordred closed in on her in an inevitable storm of destruction as he dealt out hit after hit, and Ivy had to concentrate her whole being on blocking his attacks.

The raging fire of the forest painted sparks into his dark eyes.

He twirled, sidestepped her desperate offensive, and locked her position with two forward thrusts designed to narrow the target's freedom to move. Now they had switched positions on the battlefield. Ivy squinted her eyes against the bright yellows and oranges that incinerated the trees behind Mordred. His frame blurred. Her eyesight adjusted too slowly.

With a kick to her knee and a follow-up strike to her side, Mordred overcame her defenses and let his longsword taste flesh. Ivy swallowed the surging outcry of pain and sank to her knees, while her life disintegrated before her eyes.

Gideon escaped her sweating palm as Mordred raised his sword to her throat, just below her chin, and she was forced to look up to the eyes of the man who had annihilated her entire family. Remorse brimmed in the far away corners of their abysses, but the light fainted against the cold resolve with which Mordred fed his actions. There was so little left for her to recognize. The man he had once been was dead, he had died when Mordred had decided to repay those who wronged him with the blood of all Britannia. With the blood of her family that would forever stain his hands.

The remorse still wavered in its dying breaths when Mordred raised his voice. "You should have stayed away. If you had just moved on with your life and forgot about what happened, you might have seen the future I paid for with the lives of the Seven Deadly Sins. But you are just as unreasonable as they were." The light flickered one last time and died to cast his eyes in shadows. "I won't ask for your forgiveness."

Ivy never made a sound to answer, not even when the executive swing kissed her neck, and Mordred added her blood to his hands.

* * *

By the time Katrina and Errin passed the outer walls and arrived at the battlefield, it was already too late to do anything other than mourn.

Ivy's human-sized form had fallen to the ground, and the dry surface greedily soaked up the blood pouring out of the cut in her throat. From the way her eyes had gone blank and unfocused, Katrina could tell she was dead, the remains of her life force had faded from this world slowly but still inescapable. The actions they had taken had been too little too late, a fruitless effort.

Mordred towered above Ivy's not yet cold body, frozen in time by the effects of the Time Crystal that should have been their way to prevent Ivy's death, but that had failed to affect the outcome of their encounter. While his sword dripped with blood, Mordred sank to his knees to ever so slowly come to rest beside Ivy. He reached out, and his fingers gently caressed her skin as he closed her eyes.

And there was nothing Katrina could do to stop him.

If only she had arrived sooner, if only she had pushed forward faster and disregarded the pain in her lungs with every mechanical breath, if only her magic had compelled the crystal to reduce the speed of time a little more.

Errin had collapsed to the ground in a mirroring motion of Mordred's, and the full extent of his change cascaded over her to break away her walls and beliefs, to wash them away in a flood that knew no mercy. In desperate need of something to hold on to, Errin grabbed for the fabric of Katrina's dress, her fingers possessing barely enough force to hold on. Katrina imagined to smell the nauseating odor of blood, even though she knew they were too far away and the smoke rising from the forest fire behind Mordred covered any other taste.

Katrina clenched the fist holding the crystal tight enough for the stone's edges to draw blood. The dull pain gave her a fixpoint to hold onto, and she was thankful for the clarity that followed after. In her hands, she held the key to make Ivy's death undone. All she needed to do was find out how.

Merlin hadn't taught her nearly enough of the ancient language to create spells on her own, and no matter how forcefully she searched her memory, Katrina failed to remember a word for 'backwards' or 'going back'. But Merlin had to have used it in her presence before, she had to. At least once, in passing maybe, the answer had to lay buried somewhere in the shrouded lairs of her subconscious.

When realization hit her, she nearly gasped out loud. The spell wasn't precisely what she was looking for, but it came close enough. What felt like ages ago, Gaius had used the words in her presence to repair a test-tube she had dropped in her clumsy attempt to assist him; not as much a spell of repair, but rather one to make an object return to its previous shape. Gaius had even explained the words forming the invocation to her. The word _zimoto_ represented the object set to be enchanted, and the additional command – _fibire_ – referred to the action one wanted the object to take, in this case return to its original state.

It might be a false hop after all, but it was the only way Katrina could think of to safe Ivy.

"_Atemoto fibire_," she whispered and opened her fist to reveal the light radiating from the Time Crystal that rapidly expanded to engulf her and Errin.

The thought of how to communicate to the crystal to what point in time she wanted to travel came too late to her. Brightness filled her vision to block out the world beyond, and no matter how forcefully she tried to see past the veil, the apparitions lingering out there were carried away before she could grasp them. The only indicators Katrina had to tell how fast time headed backwards were the hands of the glowing clock on the crystal's surface as they raced counter-clockwise. Trusting that the clock wasn't made to fool her, Katrina uttered the word she had used to dispel the works of the crystal last time, _umaro_.

The clock hands crashed to a halt, and the sounds of nighttime returned.

But before Katrina had a chance to fully realize her surroundings, her knees buckled under her weight, and she crashed to the ground, her hands unable to catch her. Her face met the earth, but instead of dirt, her mouth was filled with the raspy taste of being dehydrated for days on end. She had gone blind, shapeless darkness lay all around, and the only sound that reached her ears in an unsteady rhythm was the beat of her own hearts. Her senses were numbed by nothingness, but not enough to stop the shivers creeping up and down her body.

Or rather, she would have shivered if she had retained muscles to control.

A might more powerful than she was picked her from the ground, and Katrina felt something inside her snap, a door violently burst open. Like a tidal wave did the dark magic spring out of the door to flood her entire being with agony and despair. The little control she had kept was pulled out of her palms, and she became a puppet on the strings of her own darkness.

Every pore of her leaked dark magic, and the dam stood mere seconds away from breaking, from losing to the immeasurable force of the tidal wave. She wanted to scream for help, for her parents, for some higher being to make all of it stop, but there was no voice to call out with.

Before she could send one last prayer, Katrina lost consciousness.

* * *

It was less the constant clinging of metal than the uncomfortable cold of it against her cheek that woke Katrina. For a moment or so, she couldn't make sense of the situation she found herself in.

Errin carried her on her back, and she held her upright with a firm grip on her legs, while Katrina's arms were wrapped around her neck. The metal pressing against Katrina's face was Errin's shoulder plate that whipped up and down with every strained step Errin took. Even though she tried her hardest to conceal her exertion, Katrina could tell how much effort it cost Errin to continue on from the way her breath was heavy and irregular.

Katrina had to swallow a few times before she managed to form words. "Errin? What happened?"

"You passed out after you reversed time," Errin said. Although she didn't show her relief with words, her shoulders relaxed under Katrina's weight. "But you made it work, the Holy Knights just left Camelot and are now circling our rendezvous point with Lancelot and Ivy. It won't be long until they start the fire, but we should be able to get to them beforehand."

Memories, dressed as a bad dream, overflowed Katrina, and she jolted back so intensely she nearly fell off Errin's back.

"Ivy, is she okay?" she asked, almost stumbling over her tongue.

"She should be," Errin answered between breaths. "Your time magic placed her back to where she was when the scouts moved out." She paused for a long stretch of time. "Mordred wasn't among them yet."

In spite of the tiredness clouding her thoughts, Katrina felt sorry for Errin. She couldn't imagine how hard it was to lose a fundamental aspect of one's belief, she had never been shaken this way herself. Throughout her childhood, Katrina had always had guidelines to live by, words of advice her parents had given her: appreciate the kindness you receive, judge someone by their actions not by their looks, and avoid bringing harm to others. And no matter how bleak a day had been, these values had given her stability. She refused to believe this could change.

"I can walk myself," Katrina said, only for the weakness of her voice to betray her words in the same instance.

"We both know you can't. And I'm not letting you sit here for the patrol or the fire to get you," Errin said between gritted teeth. "We're practically already there, and once we met up with Lancelot and Ivy, we should be good. No need to face any Holy Knights"

Katrina fell silent for a while and listened to the rhythmic clanks of Errin's metal boots, and the drained breaths that followed the same beat. As her head felt awfully heavy, Katrina let her face rest on Errin's shoulder.

"Where's the Time Crystal?" she asked, the urgency of her question masked by the slow pace of her voice.

"I took it," Errin answered. "If it were on me to decide, I would cut this thing in half and never speak of it again. But I figure this is the tool you came looking for, and nothing I'll say will stop you from using it to prevent whatever happened at Liones. And I might just be stupid enough to continue helping you with it."

Katrina was touched by the declaration. Until now, she had doubted Errin could be convinced to stay by their side, since their goal was to stop Mordred by any means necessary. But there was no need to worry anymore. Everything would work out fine.

"Thank you, Errin." She meant it with every fiber of her heart.

"I'm not doing this for any of you. I'm doing it for him."

"I'll help you."

Errin stopped dead in her tracks, one foot suspended above ground, and she craned her neck to search for deception in Katrina's face. Regardless of the haze of drowsiness, Katrina met her gaze with what she hoped was a convincing expression.

"I'll help you help Mordred. If we can prevent him from turning into what he is now, no one needs to die. The Fall will never happen, mom and dad will be alive, and so will Mordred." Her words dripped with tiredness to the point where they had become unintelligible. "Dad always says no one is evil at their heart."

Errin dipped her head in the ghost of a nod before she continued on, her walk lighter than before. The steadiness of Errin's steps only aided the exhaustion to overtake her, and soon Katrina gave up fighting against the sleep that came to her with the sound of gentle waves washing over the shore.

A familiar voice managed to shake her out of the half-dream she had drifted into.

"I'm sure they're already way past any trouble." It was unmistakably Lance speaking, and there could only be one he was talking to.

While ignoring the weakness of her legs, Katrina slipped from Errin's back and examined the forest in front of her. When her eyes adjusted to the dim starlight, she choked with relief. Because right there stood Ivy, undeniably alive, seemingly unhurt, in her Giant form. Katrina crossed the rest of the distance separating them and threw herself, in lack of alternatives, at Ivy's foot.

"IVY!" she cried as she buried her face in the leather of Ivy's boots. "I'm so glad."

Overtaxed with Katrina's emotional outburst, Ivy carefully patted her back with her large fingertips. And why wouldn't she be bemused, to her, they had hardly been separated for an hour, and she had no memories of what Mordred had done.

"Don't tell me you already got what we're looking for," Lance said, his words directed at Errin more so than Katrina.

"We did," Errin confirmed, matter-of-factly as always. "But if we don't get a move on _now_, we'll be caught by the Holy Knights. So, if you don't mind, I suggest we celebrate later."

"Are you sure?" Lance asked. "They shouldn't be that motivated to find a stray Giant on the hunt for his late-night snack."

"They are setting up a forest fire, _right now_," Errin said, visibly annoyed at Lance questioning the urgency of the situation. "If they don't already know the earth manipulation was Ivy's work than they're about to find out soon. So please, save your breath."

The mentioning of the word 'fire' did the trick with Ivy, as she first heaved Katrina and then Lance to her shoulders. Lastly, she extended a hand down in front of Errin, who eyed the offer with mixed feelings, suspicion the most prominent one. But whether it was the fact that they were being hunted for their lives or the recent revelation that Ivy's stories about Mordred had more truth to them than she had anticipated, Errin swallowed her pride and climbed into Ivy's outstretched palm.

On Errin's behalf, Ivy turned northwards, away from the capital of Camelot, and away from Mordred who would await them there. The smell of burnt wood reached them soon after, and Katrina's senses dampened the way they did underwater. Only Lance's calm instructions prevented Ivy from panicking and changing directions.

When they broke out of the forest, Katrina was relieved to find the plain grass field to be empty, with no signs of Holy Knights.

They had managed to escape. And better yet, tomorrow they could go back in time to save those they had lost. Whether that included Mordred or not.

* * *

While Lance and Ivy examined the Time Crystal, Errin tried her very best to maintain a straight face. Too many thoughts were demanding her attention at the same time, none of them comfortable to deal with, all of them shrill in their attempt to sway her in one direction or the other. The most prevalent of them was denial, denial at what she had witnessed Mordred do.

He had known Ivy – in Errin's memories he had mentioned her in high regards a little too often even – and he had greatly respected her father. And still, he had committed the ultimate sin of murder. Not against someone who wronged him, not even someone he hated. Ivy had never raised her hands or her voice against him. But he had done it all the same.

And despite the fact that she had seen the extent of cold-bloodedness Mordred's heart had harvested, and the images haunting her all the way to their campsite, Errin still dismissed it as a play, a foul play staged by some higher might to test her loyalty. Mordred might fall back on anger, sometimes to an unjust degree, but _never_ would he have committed murder like this. That was the story she wanted to believe, and only a day ago she would have sworn with her life for it to be the truth.

"And this thing works?" Lance asked. With well justified apprehension towards its power, he tapped the Time Crystal in Ivy's hands.

"It does," Errin confirmed, proud of her flat tone. "Otherwise we wouldn't all be here."

Ivy – who had long changed back to human size – seemed unaware of the reflexive glance Errin shot in her direction, much to Errin's gratitude. Other than her emotional outburst at the sight of Ivy being alive, Katrina had held back specifics in regards to her usage of the Time Crystal, and Errin was keen to keep it that way. Last thing she wanted was to retell the events that had let them here.

"I suppose Katrina used it then," Ivy said and handed the crystal over to Lance, careful to avoid hasty movements to not bother Katrina. She had curled herself up right next to Ivy, her head resting on top of Ivy's upper leg while she lay fast asleep. "That would at least explain why she's so tired. Any side effects we have to worry about? The tag says 'don't use carelessly' for a reason."

Errin fought down the reflex to clench her hands to fists. The question was legitimate and did not indicate Ivy knowing more about the bigger picture than she should in the slightest. "Just exhaustion from her side."

Ivy took the answer without a hint of suspicion and continued to converse with Lance, which gave Errin the perfect opportunity to black all of them out.

They would use the Time Crystal sooner rather than later, their eagerness lay plain on their faces, and until then Errin had to figure out a plan that would involve Mordred as little as possible. Ivy in particular was hellbent to prevent the events that had taken place during The Fall of Liones, and Errin never doubted for a second that this determination excluded the death of Mordred if she deemed it necessary. And Errin was just as willing to stop her, whatever it might take.

From how she understood the crystal's powers, it could turn back time for anyone except the wielder and anyone who was in close enough proximity to the spell. So, if they were to use the crystal to go back one day before The Fall, they would place everyone on their positions like chess pieces ready to be moved. They could then warn the defenders of Liones about Mordred's plan and persuade them to remodel their strategy to effectively counter Mordred's invasion. That of course, required the Sins and whoever else would fight on their side to believe the outlandish story of their deaths and the subsequent journey through time by their children. Not hard to believe at all.

Even if their story was not put off as childish fantasies, it would still result in Mordred's death; his life stood against the hundreds that called Liones their home. Errin's stomach tensed into a knot, and she was glad to have skipped supper. There had to be a better option with a better outcome, she just kept overlooking it.

The question was, how far back in time could the crystal bring them. Only one day, or a week? All the way back to their birth? Even further?

Errin nearly jumped out of her sitting position as an idea crossed her mind. To go back further was exactly the way to solve this equation, so far back they wouldn't come across Mordred in the first place. The key wasn't to stop him, but to stop the tool he used to overthrow Liones.

The Colossai.

Without his army, Mordred would have no means to invade Liones and would then logically refrain from attacking in the first place. And once this threat was dealt with, Errin would find a way to save him from the darkness that plagued him. An outer force had driven him to do those horrible deeds, and Errin wouldn't rest until she freed him of this force, however powerful it might be.

Satisfied with her plan, Errin returned her attention to Lance and Ivy, whose low-voiced conversation had come to a halt for the moment.

"How do you plan to continue now?" Errin asked. She refrained from stating her idea out of the blue; it would be better if they discovered the Colossai as the key mostly on their own. Otherwise they would remain distrustful of the idea solely because it was hers.

Ivy didn't disappoint her with her naivety. "We'll use the crystal to go back a few days before The Fall and stop Mordred before he ever reaches Liones' capital."

With how many holes Ivy's answer had, it was almost too easy to point them out. "And how do you think you can stop him? Just you and Lance versus Mordred's army of Colossai?"

Ivy fell silent for a moment, but before she had the chance to ask what Errin would suggest instead, Lance took the bait.

"Maybe it'd be easier if we focus our efforts on stripping him of his army first. If he never gets to reach out to the Colossai, we won't have the trouble of dealing with the invasion at all and spare ourselves a lot of time and effort."

The whole conversation was working out better than Errin had hoped for.

"When were the Colossai freed in the first place again?" she asked to give Lance's brain the necessary push in the right direction.

"About twenty years ago, the seal holding them broke, possibly as an aftereffect of the imbalance caused by the disappearance of the Demon Clan," Lance said, much to Ivy's visible surprise.

"How do you know that?" she asked. The history of Britannia clearly fell far outside her fields of interest. Lance shrugged to indicate that he had picked up the information one day without having given much thought to it then.

Errin played her last card. "Then I guess it'd be easiest if we travel back as far as twenty years to prevent the seal from breaking in the first place."

"I guess so," Ivy said, before a different thought crossed her mind. "Why are you so interested in what we're going to do anyway, Errin? I thought you wanted to only help us get into Camelot and then go your own way. Or have you changed your mind and suddenly want to travel through time with us?" Dammit.

Luckily, Lance saved her the trouble to explain herself. "What Ivy's trying to say, is that we thank you for helping us out and… I guess we could use your help going forward too. This trip still has free seats, and we aren't picky with our company, promise."

While Lance expectedly looked at her, Ivy worked her jawline with such intensity Errin wondered if she intended to grind the upper layers of her teeth away. But whether it was because of Lance's scolding or genuine guilt, Ivy mumbled a hasty 'Sorry, Errin' before she excessively studied the relief of the nearest tree bark outside their hollow.

Regardless of Lance's – and to an extant Ivy's – thankfulness, Errin harbored no regrets about the way she tricked them into playing by her rules. And she would willingly do it again, whether it needed dishonesty or manipulation, she wouldn't lose sleep over it. After all, she _was_ helping them as a pleasant side effect. Only that her priorities lay elsewhere.

With Mordred. As it had always been.

* * *

**(A/N)** Nothing gives me insomnia quite like a mistake in a chapter I already posted. I tried to iron out some mayor ones in the Prologue and Chapter 2, but I'm pretty sure there are a couple I missed. Please always feel encouraged to point me towards errors and grammatical hiccups. (And yes, I'm aware that I'm taking all of this way to seriously!)

Anyway, thank you so much for reading. It is dearly appreciated.


	6. Twenty Years Back

– Eleven years before The Fall –

Errin reached for one of the short swords stacked on the high shelf of the armory, but even when she tiptoed, her fingers only brushed across the hilt, and she failed to get a proper grip. The swords positioned at the top of the stack tumbled sideways as she moved her item of desire a solid inch, but thankfully, the leather scabbards muffled the bulk of the resulting noise. That, however, didn't stop Orland from a panic attack.

"This is bad. This is so bad. Can we please go? We're not supposed to be here," he reminded for the millionth time.

"You could make yourself useful instead of bragging all the time," Errin said while balancing on one foot. "I can't become a Holy Knight if I don't get to train."

Even without a look at his expression, Errin could tell that Orland scowled in misery. "I don't want to be a Holy Knight."

"Yes, you do. If you want to be as good as your older brothers, you need to go all out. Try to see it this way: Your stupid brothers are only Holy Knights of Orkney, but you can be Holy Knight of Camelot, which is so much more amazing. It's a great honor."

Orland might be the fourth son of the King of Orkney, Lot the Third, but he showcased about as many royal traits as a scared squirrel. Orkney itself represented Camelot's eastern neighbor, named after the far away Orkney Islands from which the original Lot had travelled three generations ago to seize a land in the south. Since the two nations had been standing in conflict with each other for years, Lot the Third had agreed to send his youngest son to the court of King Arthur to be raised there as a sort of peace agreement. And while people had been quick to sing their praises to this newly forged peace, Errin liked to imagine King Lot laughing behind closed doors because of how easily he had gotten rid of his spineless squirrel of a son.

Errin had at long last managed to snatch two swords from up high and tossed one of them to Orland, who fumbled with the weight for a few seconds before the sheathed weapon dropped to the plastered ground with a complaining twang. And while he did make an effort to retrieve the sword, he would have placed it right back to its brothers if Errin hadn't grabbed his sleeve in time. His tirade of self-loathing lasted on their way through the windowless corridor all the way to the training yard.

Excitement had made her palms sweaty by the time Errin entered the rectangle of well-trodden dirt that formed the training yard for Holy Knights, where she had listened to the exhilarating sounds of sword combat day in and day out for the past weeks. At the early afternoon hour however, the yard was deserted.

Because Orland remained at the edge of the yard without any sign of movement, Errin threw him a discontent stare. "Don't be such a meanie. You said you would train with me."

"I never said that! And I don't want any more trouble because of you!"

With these words, Orland hurled his sword into the dirt and ran to hide some place uninteresting for the rest of the day the way he always did. Coward.

Errin huffed and began to mimic the moves she had seen Holy Knights perform during training. The heavy short sword – at least heavy for a seven-year-old – lay well enough in her hands, and she had been swinging it around and stabbing invisible foes for a few minutes when she became a little too caught up in her training.

One of the known moves she regarded most highly was a swing from over one's head all the way to the ground to end an immobilized enemy. The attack held the fascinatingly descriptive name of 'execution swing', and while Errin had no clue what that meant, it sounded like the perfect move to evoke fear in the hearts of her opponents. And since she had been doing so well against those ghostly foes of hers, she thought it would be the appropriate time to use the 'execution swing' on one of her many victims, to drive home the fact that she was Camelot's most feared warrior.

But when she tried to swing the short sword over her head, its weight proved to be too much for her child's arms to handle. The hilt slipped out of her grasp, and in an attempt to prevent the metal from hitting the ground in a silence-splitting sound that would have revealed her unwanted training, she tried to catch the sword with fumbling hands.

But instead of the hilt, she caught the sharp edges of the blade.

Shocked by the surging pain in her hands, Errin dropped the sword as if it had been a poisonous viper that had sunk its teeth into her flesh. The sight of red liquid pouring out of her palms put her into a state of horrified numbness, and her pulse rang loudly in her ears.

Then, she started to scream.

All regards to stealth to not get caught vanished in the blink of an eye, replaced by the cries of a child in desperate need of attention. Maybe this was the justified punishment for her disobedience, but her hands _hurt _so much. And despite her head starting to feel dizzy from the burnt-up air required for screaming her heart out, no one answered her pleas. Only her own cries echoed from the high rising walls surrounding the training ground to accompany her, a single-person orchestra playing a hurtful tune.

Errin had no willpower to move, much less treat her wound, and simply let the hot tears stream down her face. She regretted ever touching that sword in the first place. But all the regret in the world didn't make a helping grace appear faster.

Or maybe it did.

"Errin, are you here?" someone called out to her, the soft yet worried tone of an eight-year-old boy. But it wasn't Orland's squealing voice.

Relief only made the tears run more violently.

Mordred entered the training ground with frantic steps and picked up speed when he saw Errin kneeling on the ground and clutching her hands. His dark, purple eyes were halos in the afternoon sun.

If Mordred took notice of the sword lying blood-stained on the ground, he made no move to show it, but instead dropped to his own knees in front of her and took a hold of her wrists. His grab was soft but demanding enough for her to open her palms to reveal the gazes she had kept hidden away.

Errin expected a lecture, about how she had no business being here, much less using a sharp sword, but Mordred only blew on the wounds before he caught her confused gaze.

"It's my magical ability. It makes all the pain go away," he said and presented her the most heavenly smile she could imagine.

She knew healing was not his magical ability, he had yet to display any signs of having one in the first place. But by sheer miracle or the power of belief, Errin felt the pain fade away, until it was nothing more than a distant throbbing. In amazement, she looked up at Mordred, whose eyes were still shining with the remains of his smile.

"In the maids' kitchen we can get some water to wash the blood away. Can you walk?"

Her eyes widened and her mouth at the cusp of hanging agape, Errin shook her head. Maybe she was able to walk on her own, but she had lost control of her muscles a while ago, and she had little hope to resurrect her strength on command.

Mordred nodded understandingly and turned his back to her. "Arms around my neck, then." Errin obliged and let her arms hang loosely around his neck to not strain her injured hands.

In a sweeping motion, he heaved her onto his back, arms crossed to provide more stability for her. Bowed forward like an old man feeling the weight of the years, Mordred walked step by step towards the maids' kitchen.

"Doesn't training on your own kind of defeat the purpose of practicing your sword's skills?" he asked.

Errin was hesitant to answer, afraid of the repercussions for disobeying her father's orders. But the question didn't appear to be mean-spirited, and the milk was already spilled.

"I was only alone because Orland dropped out at the last second," she said.

"I know, he told me you forced him into treason and that he will be thrown in jail for a hundred years because of you."

"He's stupid."

"Don't say that." While the warmth never left Mordred's words, they seemed to carry more weight with them. The weight of royalty. "Orland isn't as brave as you are, but he has other talents. It's unfair to judge someone based on the one attribute you think is most important. People are more than their responsibility and their magical ability. I wish father would understand this better."

Speaking of parental disappointments… "I'm not supposed to train in the first place. Father said I'm too young. I'm gonna get in huge trouble when he finds out." Errin sighed into Mordred's shoulder.

"But there's no way he could find out. I certainly didn't see you training without permission," Mordred said with an audible grin. "Besides, I can show you the things they keep teaching me. That way we'll both get extra training. It'd be a lot more fun."

"You would do that for me?"

"Sure, I would!"

She couldn't believe her luck. Not only had Mordred promised to keep her unallowed training to himself, he actually wanted to train _with her_. It was like the universe had heard her pleas from before and was now showering her with heavenly gifts.

"Thank you," Errin said, so softly he might not have heard it.

She pulled her grasp tighter around his neck. The pain in her hands was long forgotten.

* * *

The next morning arrived uneventfully. If the Holy Knights of Camelot or rather Mordred's subsection of loyal supporters had continued to search for them throughout the night, they had been unsuccessful. The sun was just reaching over the horizon and coated the hollow and the common beeches growing at its crest in pink shades.

Ivy had for once not dreamed of the Fall of Liones, at least not as vividly as she had the last nights. The images of the dream were already fleeting, escaping the grasp of her mind as most dreams did. Only a set of purple eyes remained. Eyes she wanted to forget. The low hanging position of the sun told her that she had been granted about four hours' worth of sleep, more than she could have hoped for.

Lance and Katrina lay fast asleep, but Errin was already – or still – awake, her armored back leaned against a tree as she watched her surroundings. It would be typical of her to have stayed awake for the remainder of the night to watch out for the scouts that had set up the fire last night. Her gaze was turned inwards, unaware of the beauty of the morning sun and the plant life that began to stretch under its warmth.

When Ivy had first met her seven years ago, she had found Errin to be both energetic and demanding in her presence, a combination Ivy had gotten along with quite well. Sure, she had quarreled with Errin on numerous occasions, but disagreements of this kind were also a fundamental aspect of her friendship with Lance, so Ivy hadn't worried too much. Over time though, something between them had fallen apart, and the friendship that had just started to blossom turned to icy distance.

As she observed Errin delving into thoughts only she knew, Ivy wondered if she herself had caused this change with something she had said or done.

Thinking ahead wasn't exactly her strong suit – she had Lance to fill that part – and because of that Ivy had often messed things up with carelessly spilled words only to be ridden with guilt later. Maybe the same had happened to her bond with Errin, but if so, Ivy couldn't remember the cause for it, no matter how thoroughly she searched her memories.

Lance stirred and sat up next to her. "When will you learn that you should wake me up once you're awake?" he asked with an exasperated sigh once drowsiness had fallen off of him. He nudged her shoulder in overplayed frustration and nearly knocked her out of her sitting position in the process.

"I just woke up myself," Ivy said defensively. She tried to keep her voice hushed to not wake Katrina, who nestled her head against Ivy's upper leg.

Lance was apparently not motivated enough to keep up the argument and instead jumped to his feet. "Ready to go back twenty years to stop an army of Colossai with some untested item from Merlin's collection of crazy stuff she shouldn't play around with?"

"Ready as I'll ever be," Ivy said with the confidence of a scared teen who had lost her parents and siblings a few days ago.

Since he had expected some snarky remark, her struggled tone broke Lance's concept for a second. "I mean…," he fumbled with his words, "we're totally gonna make it. Facing an army of creatures born from stone and magic always sounds worse than it actually is."

A matter was pressing on Ivy's mind that she was unable to shove aside. "When we go back in time twenty years… do you think we'll come across our parents? They'll all be alive there."

Judging from Lance's troubled expression, he hadn't considered that possibility. "Maybe," he said slowly after calming his nerves a little. "The seal holding the Colossai is located far to the north, so we'll come pretty close to the Fairy King's Forest. It might even be best to ask for the Sin's help with the seal. They'll be able to do more than we can. We could even swing by Liones' capital and –"

"Absolutely not!" Errin, who had previously paid no attention to their conversation, had jumped to her feet, and her angry gaze skipped back and forth between them. "We can't tell them about time travel, Mordred, or _anything_ really. If we'll just go to them to say 'Hi, we're your kids from the future and want to prevent your deaths, sounding like crazy lunatics will be the least of our problems. We might change so much that none of us will even be born."

Ivy had chosen to ignore the ramifications of interacting with her parents at a time where she had yet to be born, but Errin's outburst held more truth than she would have liked to admit. All Ivy had thought about was the chance to see them again.

"Of course we wouldn't say that," Lance said, miraculously calm in spite of Errin screaming at his face. "All they need to know is that there is a seal full of Colossai that we are worried about, and that we want their help in dealing with it. We can pretend to be travelers who live close to that seal."

Errin burst out into a humorless laugh that made Ivy's skin crawl with its remorselessness. "There is no way we will pull that off. Ivy has her mother's exact face and eyes; you think her father won't notice that? You pretty much look like a copy of your father and there aren't exactly many half-Goddess half-Demons running around either. We are talking about the beings with the highest magical talents in all of Britannia – there's no way the likes of us can fool them with some made up story."

"Okay, I get it, we _won't_ involve any of the Sins," Lance said, visibly baffled by Errin's definitive state on the matter.

Ivy kept her quiet, but deep down she took a little more time to bury the hope of seeing her parents alive at least one more time, even if they failed to trap the Colossai in their seal.

Finally satisfied, Errin turned her back to them. "I'm gonna scout the surroundings. Make sure there aren't any unfavorable surprises lurking around. We can get going when I get back," she said before marching past the tree line and out of view.

"Wonder what's gotten in to her all of a sudden," Lance commented Errin's behavior and entertained himself by admiring the rising sun that created a fascinating carpet of light and shadow on the forest's ground.

"Maybe something happened yesterday when she and Katrina used the crystal," Ivy suggested. "They were both pretty tightlipped about the whole incident. It might have even involved Mordred in some way."

"Isn't it always Mordred in some way?"

He had a point there. Errin's life seemed to have always revolved around Mordred since as far back as Ivy could recall. They gravitated towards each other like opposing forces of nature, never escaping the pull of the other, turning in an endless dance of backs and forths.

"She's probably really happy that we're not dealing with Mordred himself in the past," Lance said with a thoughtful look trailing after where Errin had disappeared out of sight.

Ivy could only nod in agreement.

After she had watched the sun climb ever higher in its persistent path over the horizon for a while, Ivy decided it would be best to wake Katrina before Errin had the chance to scold them for their slow pace. Much to her surprise, Katrina was already awake. Although she hadn't stirred once, she had to have been alert for a while because her eyes stood wide open. Ivy guessed she had followed the entirety of their argument.

Hesitantly, Ivy put one hand to Katrina's forehead, a technique she had seen her mother perform to calm her younger siblings. "Are you okay, Katrina?"

"Yes." The reply was so weak it was almost inaudible. A few beats of helpless waiting passed between them before Katrina continued. "I – I'm just scared of what happens when I fail to use the Time Crystal. When I mess up."

Ivy struggled to come up with a reassuring response. Katrina was too young to handle this much responsibility, too young to have this look of self-doubt covering her face. But as much as Ivy wanted to find supportive words, her reply sounded incredibly weak, even in her own ears. "You'll make it. I'm sure you will."

Katrina sat up to look at Ivy; her eyes had turned dark with uncertainty. She opened her mouth to say something but stopped herself before a single syllable could pass her lips. When she broke the self-inflicted silence, it didn't seem to be whatever Katrina had originally wanted to say.

"Okay," was the only response Ivy received.

The fake smile Katrina send after killed the conversation for good. Ivy rose to her feet to escape the silence and started to pace around the campsite. Every few steps, her focus darted back to Katrina. She had pulled the Time Crystal from her pockets and stared at the palm-sized stone, imploring it to work when she would summon its powers.

Errin needed more time with scouting out the area than Ivy would have liked, and anxiousness spread through her muscles like a virus that kept her running.

She hated waiting with a burning passion.

While Ivy had never had a problem with letting the hours go by while doing really nothing at all, whenever there had been an event in the foreseeable future, her mind had shut down and could do little better than count down the seconds.

Just when Ivy thought she would have to explode from the rising tension, Errin returned, her face, that usually resembled a blank canvas, frowned out of worry.

"There are still patrols surveying the area around Camelot. All of them with the crest of the Round Table," she said. "They didn't see me, but they'll eventually come over here to search for those responsible for last night's disturbance. Ideally, we'll be long gone before they get here."

Katrina seemed to shrink under the scrutiny of three pairs of eyes that Errin's words had directed to her. But despite her visible discomfort, she found some traces of bravery left in her and positioned herself at the center of attention. With her right hand clenched around the Time Crystal, she raised her other arm, palm facing the ground. Lance was the first one to accept the invitation and placed his hand on top of hers, before Ivy mimicked the gesture. Errin hesitated a moment longer but then laid her hand at the top, avoiding skin contact as much as humanly possible without pulling away.

After taking a deep breath, Katrina started the incantation with words Ivy neither understood nor could assign any meaning to.

"_Atemoto fibire varte dekida"_

Katrina's command conjured a simplified clockface made out of thin, golden lines as soon as the first words passed her lips. Born out of the insides of the Time Crystal, the clock hovered above their outstretched hands and sent out rays of bright light in all directions. Soon the four of them were imprisoned in the cocoon of blinding white and gold. Ivy's heartbeat hitched with increasing discomfort as the hands of the clock raced each other backwards over the clockface, spinning faster and faster as they went until their forms disintegrated in a blur.

The time spell was accompanied by a surge of magical – for the lack of a better word – _presence_ that made Ivy gasp for air. The presence overwhelmed her, blacked out her senses to the point where her eyes and ears quit on her. Lance's hand under her own remained the only source of faint comfort.

Ivy couldn't tell how long it was taking for the enchantment to do its work, but when the light cocoon slowly dispelled, she felt dislocated for a moment or two. Only reluctantly, her mind picked up the puzzle pieces that her resurging senses were sending her. A crackling sound she couldn't place echoed in her ears. Lance pulled his hand away, and when she managed to make her head turn to look at him, his face showed itself pale, sick even, and Ivy worried he might pass out.

But all other thoughts came to a screeching halt when the crackling of energy rose in volume as it coursed through an enclosed system, ready to overload.

It was Katrina.

Her entire face was covered in black marks, and where her eyes used to be there were only dark pools of nothing. By some malicious force, her arm remained frozen in the same position it had been in when she had conjured the crystal's magic. The presence Ivy had felt before hadn't disappeared along with the magical clock, rather it had increased in force, ready to swallow every living being in its depths.

Driven by pure instinct because her mind could in no way process what was happening, Ivy pulled Lance away from Katrina. Errin came to her sense right after and dashed out of reach of the pulsating magic. Ivy called the earth to her aid and its structure rearranged itself into a wall to shield them from the inevitable outburst. Not a second too late, as a storm of hellfire released itself and clashed with the barrier. The agony that arose as the dark magic consumed plants and burned the earth hit Ivy like a gut punch and almost caused her to drop the protective earth wall. Magic strings were cut, life forces snuffed out, and despair reigned supreme.

Then it was over.

Where there had been a forest a minute ago, smoldered a crater. Fine rags of smoke curled into the sky, heavy with the ash and energy of dead plants and critters. At the center of it all remained Katrina, her tiny form fallen to the ground, no more than an empty vessel.

* * *

Despite being able to walk on the same shared plain of the mortal world, the five clans to inhabit Britannia all had a realm of existence to call their own. Aside from the human realm, also referred to as the mortal realm because of the short lifespan of its residents, there existed four other ones, which were unequally disconnected from the land of Britannia. The Giant Realm, or more accurately their capital named Megadoza, very much existed as part of the human world and was therefore relatively easy to access, if one knew where to look. The Fairy Realm with its endless forest protected by the Fairy King behaved similarly, though trying to enter without the permission or trust of the Fairy King was in most cases a fruitless undertaking. In contrast, both the heavenly Goddess Realm and the Demon Realm were deadly to all other beings due to their environmental conditions, and no mortal had ever laid eyes on them.

Even the educated folks of Britannia only knew of these five realms, and most of them were content to never set foot into any one other than their own. Records existed, however, of subsets belonging to specific realms, such as Purgatory and The Sky Temple. And while their existence had reached a state of mysticism in the years after the Holy War, those with a fascination for the wonders that lay beyond the horizon of their own world could find scribbled notes of these places in many textbooks circulating the plentiful marketplaces of Britannia.

And then – and even fewer beings knew of this one – there was the Time Realm.

The number of people who had ventured into this particular realm could be counted with one hand, most of them being wizards of Belialuin who had been too curious for their own good.

And now, Gaius was one of them.

That prospect might have excited him on first – and probably second – inspection, but the circumstances surrounding his visit lacked the glorious nature of inspecting the different realms he had envisioned while reading about them. And without any method of navigation, he merely wanted to get out as soon as possible. Because when considering all factors objectively, he was stuck. Badly.

No matter in which direction his gaze went, all Gaius was able to identify were millions of time strings – his own discovery as well as his own, proudly used thermology – as they floated and twirled in the dead space of the Time Realm. Each string had its own unique color pattern and its own distinct manner of moving around. Some passed by in crowds, like a shoal of fish fleeing from a predator, while others hazily drifted by, changing directions as they went, with no desire to reach any location at all.

Having been raised to be curious of all things that have yet to be properly explored, Gaius had tried to touch one of the slower strings passing by after he had landed here. He had, however, deeply regretted the action, for the images he had been bombarded with had forced their way into his head with such brutality that he had feared he had to burst from the information overload. The mental attack had only stopped once he had pulled back, and the images, that had been so vibrant a second ago, slipped through his fingers like water. From that point forward, Gaius had refused to lay hands on any strings, no matter how teasingly they whirled around him.

The maddening quality of the Time Realm was that it existed completely separated from the world Gaius called home, so he had no method to tell how long he had been here, watching time strings move from point A to point B. Without a hint as to what those points exactly were.

In theory, the nature of the Time Realm should allow him to return to the exact point he had left, no matter how much time he had to devote to his search. His absence would remain entirely unnoticed.

Merlin…

If Gaius managed to return to Britannia only a few minutes earlier, he would be able to warn her in time. Before she was forced to send him away.

But getting there was challenging enough. The time strings bore no sign as to where – and _when_ – they would lead until one touched them. And as Gaius had sworn to himself, he would avoid that risk as long as it lacked absolute necessity.

All location spells he recited in his head did nothing to help him escape, his efforts of trying to identify strings and their belonging time frame were in vain, and all the bits and pieces he had read about the Time Realm turned out useless.

Gaius considered testing his luck with some random string again when a curious light phenomenon snatched his attention away. Only a few feet away – or what he proceeded to amount to a few feet in a realm without objects to measure distance against – a crowd of time strings had gathered, circling around each other to form an almost perfect sphere. All the while, the strings emitted a light of white and gold that exponentially intensified.

This was not the first time Gaius had seen an occurrence of this kind. Twice before a couple of strings had glowed with similar brightness, but both times the light had died before he had been able to investigate.

Ridden with curiosity, Gaius willed his form closer to the light spectacle. Since physics were as much in need of time as most living things, there was no need or possibility to walk, a though was enough to bring him next to the orb made out of curled up time strings. The same way as with a ball of wool, each string added more substance to the sphere, to the point were Gaius was unable to tell how many of them partook in the gathering.

Even before his dimensionless form touched the orb, images invaded his mind, just like last time. His head was spinning with information he could not process, images he did not understand. A fire raged, screams, a spear dropped to the floor, a body, struck down by an execution swing, followed thereafter and proceeded it at the same time, all accompanied by a distant throbbing as drums build towards a crescendo.

Until there was an image so crystal clear it might have been reality.

A young girl in a dress of dark blue and white, her blond hair caught by the force of the wind. Her eyes shone like emeralds in the light of the afternoon summer sun, a green so rich and deep that all the ponds and forests in this world seemed pale by comparison. Gaius recognized her in an instant.

Never thinking twice, he pressed down onto the orb and plummeted headfirst into the bright void within it.

* * *

Britannia from twenty years ago wasn't all that different from present day Britannia. The forest from which they had travelled backwards in time looked mostly identical in the past, a little less dense at max – though now it was merely a black crater, and the common beeches that had stood in the peak of their youth were no more. Other than that, both the main road connecting Liones and Camelot and the grassy plains into which it was imbedded appeared no different from how they had looked in the present, or the future if one wanted to be precise.

The only indicator for Lance to confirm the success of their time travel, was the appearance of Camelot itself. Whereas Lance remembered the capital to be a colossal embodiment of the southern kingdom's power, right now, the city presented itself more like a colossal building site. The outer walls stood as tall as ever, but the royal palace was missing a few of its towers, and the roofless great keep nearly disappeared behind the wooden scaffoldings that swarmed its structure. Workforces hustled around the construct, heaving beams and shingles upwards with cranes build from massive oak trees, and the sounds of hammering and pottering filled the air with a persistent carpet of noise. Craters, quite similar to the one Katrina had torn into the earth, covered the landscape outside the capital like open wounds.

Lance didn't need long to connect the dots. Since they had gone back about twenty years, the end of the war and the destruction of Camelot had occurred only five years ago, and the rebuilding process was still ongoing.

Errin gave the city, her home, a longing look before turning north towards the goal of their trip into the past, the sealed home of the Colossai.

"They journey will cost us at least a week if we have to get there on foot," she said with a sour expression that did nothing to make her look prettier – not that she would have cared.

"I could manage the distance in half the time," Ivy said. She was currently the one carrying Katrina, who had been knocked out cold by the eruption of dark magic, on her back.

The whole incident had occurred so abruptly that Lance hadn't even processed Katrina's changed appearance by the time Ivy had shoved him behind her makeshift wall to essentially save his life. Because, if the scorched plant life was any indicator, the wave of Demon power would have reduced him to little more than ash in the wind. Since then, Katrina had been unconscious and Lance had been struggling to recover from the shock of nearly being burnt alive by one of his closest friends.

What a fantastic way to start off their trip into the past.

"Not if we can avoid it," Errin cut into Lance's disordered thoughts. "A Giant will inevitably raise suspicions, even without taking any stigmata against them into account."

"But so will three kids wandering around while carrying an unconscious forth one," Lance said. With a better and faster alternative at hand, he couldn't claim to be eager to make the entire trip on foot.

Errin's displeased frown miraculously deepened further. But in the end, she had nothing to argue against sound logic and surrendered with gritted teeth.

Only a couple moments later, Lance had resumed his place on Ivy's left shoulder, while a weary Errin tried to hold her balance on the opposite one. Meanwhile, Katrina lay safely curled up within Ivy's palm, unaware of the commotion around her.

This time, Ivy chose to walk right next to the cobblestone road coiling its way north, that turned into a mere line of well-trodden dirt as they moved further away from Camelot. Another fine difference to the future where one could cross the entire distance between the capitals of Camelot and Liones without setting foot on anything other than paving stone.

They occasionally crossed paths with farmers heading along the opposite direction, and their odd group almost always drew forward suspicious looks and a few openly hostile stares. Much like Errin had predicted, Giants were met with apprehension, even though the Holy War that had painted the Demon King as the shared threat to join forces against still lingered in the minds of the forgetful commoner. Thankfully, Ivy was in a forgiving mood and meet the unfriendly reactions with an open smile that was even returned a handful of times. Lance silently thanked the heavens for the unknown force that made Ivy this calm. Because, unlike Errin, Ivy did care about what others thought of her, and a violent outburst born from frustration happened to be about the last thing he needed.

The hours passed away, and Katrina still showed no sign of waking up any time at all, and whenever Lance asked Ivy about her condition, he was only presented with a sleeping Katrina in Ivy's palm. If it was still sleep that caused her to stay motionless and nothing more severe.

He was about to pry Ivy with the same question once more, when she stopped walking so abruptly that Errin nearly fell right off her shoulder.

But before she or Lance had a chance to complain about the unexpected halt, Ivy held her hand up for them to see. More asleep than awake, Katrina stirred violently, and her fists lunged for the enemies in her nightmare, but Ivy was the only one she managed to hit. Black marks of the Demon Clan danced across her face.

"Katrina?" Ivy asked and carefully brushed away Katrina's hair with her thumb.

As a response, Katrina's eyes flung wide open, her iris overtaken by black. If she was seeing any of them, she showed no sign of recognition and continued to stare into the void while her body pulsated with dark energy. Silence settled between them, heavy like the last moments before the outburst of a deadly disease, only interrupted by Ivy's uneven breaths. Gradually, the darkness faded from Katrina's empty eyes to return the spark of life to them, and Lance finally allowed himself to breathe.

"Ivy? What happened?" Katrina asked, her voice broken and hoarse.

"We made it twenty years back and then you passed out," Lance answered,

Given how burned out she looked, he deemed it better to leave out the details about how she had leveled an entire forest and nearly got the rest of them killed. The soothing lie was quite similar to the story Errin had used to wash away Ivy's concerns regarding the usage of the Time Crystal, and Lance couldn't help but wonder if Errin had anticipated Katrina to turn into a volcano of hellfire.

"I feel so empty," Katrina whispered, too exhausted to raise her voice. "But we did go back in time twenty years?"

"We didn't think about asking anyone about the exact year, but from what we've seen of Camelot, it was pretty reassuring," Ivy said while raising Katrina to the shoulder Lance was occupying.

Katrina struggled with climbing up, and only after Lance had grabbed both her arms to pull her up, did she finally make it. Lance rubbed his protesting shoulder and made a face as the joints creaked during his attempt to roll them back to place. But despite the discomfort, he invited Katrina to lean her head against him for additional support. She still looked as though she might fall back into a coma and tumble to the ground any second, and Lance doubted to have the upper body strength to catch her.

"We should pause for a while soon anyway," he said with a sidelong glance to Ivy, who received the message but disregarded the hint as was common for her.

"I'm good, that was enough of a pause for now. If you'd get to decide the tempo, we'd never even reach the Highlands."

Lance took the jibe wordlessly and swallowed his – well reasoned – complaint as Ivy rebuild pace. Her shadow grew larger to her side as the day began to fade until it stretched taller than she did.

To prevent Katrina from falling asleep and losing her balance in the process, Lance offered to play 'Five Clans', a human children's game designed with the sole purpose to kill time. The game only required one hand to play, and its rules could even be followed by a toddler. Unfortunately, winning the damn thing was purely a matter of chance.

"_Five clans de-clare war_," Katrina and Lance chanted unison, followed by a groan from Lance as his up-faced clawed hand representing the Demon Clan was purged by Katrina's Goddess Clan, symbolized by an outward facing palm. This marked the fifth time in a row he had lost a match.

His luck was disastrous today.

"_Five clans de-clare war_," they said to initiate the rematch that he lost once again, this time through his Fairy Clan being hunted down by Katrina's single raised thumb, a stand-in for a human.

"Why do humans win against any clan anyway?" Lance complained. If the game had required at least a pinch of strategy, then maybe he wouldn't have to lose all the time. "Aren't humans objectively the weakest of the five races?"

"Probably to make the game more balanced," Ivy said and raised her free hand to declare a match against him.

In hopes of finally snatching a victory, Lance started the chant that was part of the limited ruleset, this time with the intend to use the Giant Clan. But at the sight of Ivy's index and middle finger extended to form a 'V', he lost his last remnant of hope.

"So, did you win this time?" Ivy asked. She had difficulties to see Lance's hands without turning her neck so far it might push one of them off.

"Yeah," Lance lied flatly and quickly turned his fist into the clawed grasp of the Demon Clan, which was effective against the Fairy Clan. Katrina made a complaining sound, but Lance shushed her with a pleading look.

But Ivy wasn't as easily fooled. "Has anyone ever told you that lying isn't exactly one of your strongest assets?"

"You probably have." With a heavy sigh, he accepted his defeat.

The next days were as uneventful as they were tedious.

Errin maintained her usual quiet and stoic self that engaged in the simplest of social activities such as talking as little as humanly possible, which became even more aggravating considering the fact that they were stuck together for multiple days.

Katrina slowly recovered from the excessive usage of Demon magic, and especially with her in earshot, the topic of her powers was avoided. Now it was Ivy who Lance worried about on a regular basis. While she would not have admitted it to anyone, the long days of travelling that quite literally all rested on her shoulders slowly but steadily ate away at her body. Add the fact that they were all malnourished because they were too incompetent to plan a journey like this in advance, and one had a recipe for disaster.

What little provisions Errin had retained in her saddlebags hadn't lasted past their trip to Camelot, and Lance had long begun to long for the taste of bread. The pine forests they passed through were just as unhelpful, because the red fruits Katrina mistook for raspberries turned out to be unripe blackberries. And while Katrina was tempted to try them regardless, Ivy and Lance had been lectured about edible plants and fruits too often to give in. The rabbit Errin managed to hunt down that same evening had barely enough flesh to it to satisfy the hunger of one of them, let alone provide a stable nutrition basis for four people.

Lance had thought time would be their fiercest enemy, but it was in fact hunger that drove him to a lack of concentration, Errin to an even more closed-up mood than usual, and Ivy to a concerning level of physical exhaustion each day.

By the third day they agreed they couldn't possibly continue going on like this. They needed to stop and gather supplies, otherwise what would be left of them would have no chance against a single Colossai, let alone an army of them. Liones' capital was close and tempting, and the mere mention of a marketplace made their mouths water.

From the hillside they were standing on, one had a clear view of the capital of Liones stretching out under them, currently still the largest town in all of Britannia, and an impressive sight for anyone who got to see it for the first time. In Lance's memories, however, the nexus of commotion and display of human power had been swapped with the destroyed shell it had been after The Fall, and to see Liones thriving and buzzing with activity alienated him.

Good thing they weren't here for any sight-seeing but rather serious business, a matter of life and death.

"I'm starving," Lance said to break up the silence that had befallen them at the sight of Liones, which in Katrina's case was very much 'home'.

"We all are, but complaining about the state of things won't get us particularly far." Seemingly out of thin air, Errin produced a handful of coins she handed over to Lance. "Those are the last of my savings. It isn't all that much, so don't waste it on anything other than food."

Ivy was obviously quite unhappy with how deliberately Errin had excluded herself from the task of gathering supplies. "And where do you plan to go instead?"

"I need to see a blacksmith to fix up my sword. It has been collecting dust for too long," Errin answered curtly. "You three take care."

And with that, Errin headed away, surprisingly energetic for someone who hadn't had a solid meal in days.

"She probably just wants to get away from us for a while," Ivy said, judgement ringing from her tone.

Errin had disappeared out of view for a while before the rest of them decided to follow her down the hillside and towards the southern gate of Liones' capital. Katrina in particular downright blossomed as the distance separating her from home shrunk away, and Liones, shining under the midday sun like an enormous jewelry, grew until it filled their entire field of view.

But they never even made it to the road leading towards the gates.

Ivy – back to human size – flinched right next to Lance, and soon enough the sound of voices and laughter reached his ears as well. The source was too far away to make out anything concrete, but from the sound of it, they, whoever they were, were coming closer.

"Meliodas!" someone suddenly called out, a lot closer than Lance would have liked.

The familiarity of the voice was unmistakable, even without Katrina's face filling up with glee so entirely that the Goddess triskelion briefly flashed to replace her iris. She made a step into the direction from which the voice had called before Ivy snatched her wrist in an attempt to pull her backwards.

"We gotta hide!" Ivy hissed, but since fate was always on their backside, there was nothing to use as cover, merely summer grass and a plethora of different types of flowers covering the hillside.

Their pointless antics were undercut mere seconds later as a young, blond man came into view behind the crest of a hill, a silver-haired woman at his heels.

Katrina's parents, the Dragon's Sin Meliodas and the Goddess Elizabeth, eyed the three children in front of them with plain curiosity while the trio was unable to do anything other than stare back just as blankly. Meliodas put his arm protectively – and just as much possessively – around Elizabeth's waist and narrowed his eyes. Lance had the unshakable feeling of fate having slapped them in the face in the most uncalled-for way imaginable.

So much for _not, at all costs_, interacting with their parents.

"Hi," Ivy, Katrina, and Lance greeted in perfect awkward unison.

Lance could almost see Errin rolling her eyes at their ineptness. And this time he absolutely, one-hundred percent, agreed with her.

* * *

**(A/N)** Finally, finally we get to the part where the Sins start to show up. It's taken quite a while, but I wanted to spend some time introducing my main cast before I start throwing even more characters into the mix. Things will be pretty crowded from here on out, that's for sure. I hope you enjoyed the journey thus far and that you're looking forward to the upcoming chapters.

Depending on where you live, this chapter will be out very late in 2019 with the next year already on your doorsteps. I wanted to aim for another release before New Year's Eve, but than Christmas and my usual post-exam sickness happened, and my progress was slowed down considerably. But my clock's still showing 2019, so I at least I managed to get this out before the turn of the decade.

Have an amazing 2020 everyone!


	7. Manifold Reunions

– The day of The Fall –

"Why can't I come with you?" Katrina asked while slamming one hand on the table, a move that left her parents unimpressed.

"'Cause it's gonna be a whole lot of uninteresting talk about politics and borders, and we wanna save you from one of Lil' Gil's lectures," Meliodas answered only to lovingly pet Katrina's head.

She allowed him to disorder her hair, but when it came to her questions, she wouldn't let him get away as easily. "Lance said you will talk about Mordred."

Meliodas and Elizabeth shared an alarmed look, and the additional spoonful of sugar Elizabeth had intended to pour into her tea returned to its porcelain home, suddenly unwanted.

"Which is just another reason for why you shouldn't attend the meeting," Elizabeth said firmly before continuing in a softer tone. "Ivy and Lance aren't invited either, so we're not doing this to upset you. Aren't you looking forward to see Cynthia and the others again? As soon as Diane and King arrive at the palace, they will send them over. And Lance will be here any minute, so you won't get bored."

Katrina leaned back in her chair and studied the small bumps and hill ranges on the tabletop. The valleys in between them showed discoloration from spilled ale that had to be older than she was, at least the stains had been there as long as Katrina had been tall enough to peek atop the table in the middle of her parents' inn. To an extent, she could see the reason behind her mom's arguments, but it was obvious that she held back important details. As Katrina had argued with Lance, there had to be a severe reason for all former Sins gathering to discuss an ominous _something _with her uncle King Gilthunder. The fact that this something was related to Mordred spiked her curiosity, and her parent's secrecy on the matter frustrated Katrina to no end.

"We'll be home as soon as we can, promise. Then you can continue reading to me, fair?" her dad said with his signature grin.

Ever since Katrina had improved reading, they had struck a deal in which Katrina payed back the times her dad had been forced to read to her as a child to calm her. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy the stories per se, rather he disliked reading in general and liked to excuse himself by saying his family hadn't been big on wasting time to read. Even after all this time, the tiny scribbled letters in Katrina's small collection of fables and legends tired him.

"Fair," Katrina said to satisfy her dad, but the disappointment continued to nag at her.

She had always hated to be separated from her parents, and even though she knew they would never lie to her in regards to the length of this meeting, the aura of foreboding that had emerged a few weeks ago, made her feel more than a little on edge.

Her parents had tried to keep the news from her, but Lance had told her about the political turmoil in Camelot that had arisen after the death of its king, Arthur. The dissonance regarding the line of succession threatened to turn into a civil war, and Lance had overheard numerous whispered debates among Holy Knights that gave cause for concern. If even a fraction of the stories were true, it would explain the emergency meeting of the Sins and the constant worry that plagued her parents these days.

All too soon, Elizabeth set aside her teacup and rose alongside Meliodas. Reluctantly, Katrina followed her parents on their way to the door that, once it was opened, allowed for a marvelous view of Liones' capital, set between hills of flowing grass in the summer sun. The day was almost too lovely, the sun almost too bright.

Another surge of worry led Katrina to question her parents one last time. "And you'll be home soon?"

Her mom gave her an encouraging smile, and her dad stroked her hair with all the affection of a proud parent. "I've promised you, didn't I?" he said before turning to leave.

Meliodas and Elizabeth stepped outside, and the wooden door closed behind them with a thud, banning the picturesque scenery around the Boar Hat.

Katrina remained in front of the doorframe until Lance showed up in company of his mother. At least from Katrina's side, the welcoming was distant, and she escaped their presence as soon as politeness allowed. From her room on the third floor, she was able to overview Liones as it lay in the calm before the storm, in ignorance of the disaster that was about to boil over, heated by the betrayal of one man.

With a crashing sound loud enough to shake the heavens, two dozen Colossai tore themselves from the earth at Liones' east gate. The construct of iron and stone failed to withstand the onslaught, and soon a hole gaped in the outer wall, wide enough to let an army pass through. All Katrina could do was watch in horror as the horde started invading the capital.

The Fall of Liones had begun.

* * *

Katrina had recognized the voices of her parents long before they came into view, and her hearts had ached with longing and the hope of easing the loneliness she had felt since they walked out that door on the day of The Fall. To see them unharmed and with joyous smiles on their faces was a gift, a gift she had doubted to ever receive. But she couldn't fully enjoy the reunion. She wasn't allowed to fall around their necks and break into tears upon their soothing insurances that everything was alright and that she would never again have to part from them. The people of front of her didn't know her. In their world, she didn't exist.

With a slow but uneven breath, Katrina let the tears die before they had a chance to call her out.

"Yo, what's up?" Meliodas greeted. He relaxed his grip around Elizabeth a little but not entirely.

"We're just on our way to Liones," Lance said in a desperate attempt to save the situation that was slipping out of his hands. "It was nice meeting the two of you, but we're in a bit of a hurry."

Meliodas and Elizabeth exchanged the tiniest of glances before looking the three strangers in front of them up and down more thoroughly.

"Do I happen to know you?" Meliodas asked as he scrutinized Lance. As Errin had feared, he resembled his father too much.

Lance managed to stay calm, but he did flinch a little under Ivy's fierce grip around his arm that threatened to break his bones. "Unlikely, we don't come by Liones all that often. If you'll excuse us, me and my, uhm, friends are hungry from the long journey and hope to fetch something to eat at Liones."

As far as Katrina was concerned, Lance was doing a great job handling the situation, coming up with multiple excuses on the fly. Only that he had forgotten one game changing detail.

"That's fantastic!" Elizabeth exclaimed and clapped her hands in excitement. "The newly opened Boar Hat is just a few minutes away. If you are that hungry, it would be much easier for you to join us on our way there."

Katrina's heartbeat raced faster, and she wanted nothing more than to accept the invitation and go with them, even though she knew how dangerous this thought was. Lance and Ivy exchange panicked looks. Their window of escape was narrowing rapidly with each passing second.

"The Boar Hat?" Ivy asked weakly.

"Yes. Meliodas here is the owner of the tavern."

"It's _our_ tavern, to be precise," Meliodas said. His affection for Elizabeth showed plain on his face. "The food's great, we promise."

If even possible, the faces of Lance and Ivy darkened further. Hunger might have made them desperate, but Meliodas' skills in the kitchen were infamously remembered by all of them. Through years of training, Katrina had developed a sort of resistance against the horrendous taste of her father's cocking, but Lance had nearly lost consciousness the last time he had been force-fed some of Meliodas' apple pie, and Ivy had coughed so heavily that she had dropped straight out of her chair. Neither of them was eager to repeat the experience.

But Elizabeth proved stubborn to no end, and, accompanied by a grinning Meliodas, she half led, half dragged the three of them to the Boar Hat.

The house with its pointy rooftop, set on a gentle hill in a sparse forest outside of Liones' capital, looked the same way Katrina remembered it, only the metal sign to identify the building as the 'Boar Hat' was a little less rusty, and the wooden porch had only recently been treated to a fresh layer of paint. The fine crack in the rendering next to the door, where a hopelessly drunk Ban had stumbled against during the topping out ceremony, disfigured the front the same way it always had. It was undoubtedly home.

Even after Katrina had been born, her parents never fully dropped out of the tavern business and continued to open their doors on special occasions. Those had often included Katrina's birthdays, an annual event her parents liked to blow way out of proportion, where everyone with and without rank and name in Britannia was invited.

"Voila," Meliodas said once they entered the main room. A collection of tables and unoccupied stools dominated the place, with a long counter to the right, behind which rows upon rows of bottles were stored. Green, purple, and burgundy glass caught he light from the closest lattice window. Exactly as it would be twenty years from now. "There isn't too much commotion around here now, but by evening the place will be packed."

"Is there some kind of event today?" Ivy asked warily while she struggled to build up strength for Meliodas' inevitable cocking.

Meliodas snickered. "Ni, shi, shi. Of course, there is. It's the annual celebration of the disbandment of the Seven Deadly Sins."

Ivy's and Lance's eyes widened with shock, and Katrina nearly lost her footing on the uneven stone tiles. The disbandment of the Sins had still been a celebration back in their time, but Katrina had completely forgotten about the event that rolled around every summer. To be fair, her head had been filled with more pressing matters, and they hadn't plan to run into any Sins in the first place. But the fact that this celebration was due _today_ was a severe case of bad luck.

"Then we'll do our best to not bother you for too long," Lance said with the most even tone he could muster. "I'm sure you'll have lots of preparing to do."

"It won't be any trouble for us," Elizabeth said. It appeared as though she wanted to add something, but Meliodas cut in before she had the chance to speak.

"Yeah, you're lucky our cook's already arrived. Speaking of…Yo, BAAAN! Why wontcha be so kind and prepare three meals for our guests?"

Lance paled at the mention of the name, and he made haste to hide behind Ivy as Ban's head peeked out of the kitchen door.

"You said there won't be any folks for a couple more hours," Ban complained, thankfully without paying close attention to the three guests. "And we're still missing a bunch of ingredients."

"You're being paid to cook not to complain."

"I'm not being paid at all!"

Elizabeth tried to intervene before the argument could evolve into a fight – or an arm-wrestling match – that had the potential to wreck the furniture, if not the room in its entirety. "Ban, I'm sorry this is on such short notice, but these three said they were really hungry and –"

"Yeah, yeah, you can't let anyone down when they come begging at your doorsteps."

Ban fully entered the room to smack the back of Meliodas head in good fun and to inspect the three strangers. Heat rose to Katrina's face under Ban's thorough gaze that she had always found intimidating. Right next to her, Lance and Ivy clung together as though that action could shield them from recognition by their father and uncle respectively.

But in the end, it was Katrina on whom Ban's gaze lasted the longest. "You look familiar. We won't happen to know each other?"

Katrina was too shaken to deny the suspicion, and when Ban shot a glance at Meliodas for backup, she saw their ruse fall to pieces. But her awful luck stood down for once, as Ban dropped matter without further investigation.

"I suppose I better get cocking, or I'm gonna lose my underpaid job," he said with a grin.

"You better do that!"

The bulk of Katrina's nervousness eased once Ban headed back into the kitchen, and she allowed her shoulders to slack in relief. For the time being, the catastrophe was averted. With an apologetic smile, Elizabeth directed the three guests to one of the large wooden tables to take a seat. Ivy slumped onto her chair rather ungracefully, and Lance sat down next to her no less exhausted.

"I don't mean to be rude," Elizabeth began once everyone had settled down around the table, with the exception of Meliodas, who had disappeared behind the counter to polish some mugs. "But I was wondering what would compel three young people to travel all on their own. And under such horrible conditions." The last part was uttered in direct regards to Ivy, who had collapsed in her seat and was no longer following the conversation. In the warm light of the Boar Hat, her features appeared to have sunken in even further.

"We… we have a personal threat to deal with. One in the far north. The Highlands," Lance said and tried his best to avoid Elizabeth's eyes without making it too obvious that he was holding back on anything concrete.

"And you believe you can tackle this threat on your own." It wasn't phrased as a question, but Elizabeth's words spoke directly to Katrina's worries: That they would be unable to deal with the Colossai alone. That they would fail.

"Not really," Lance admitted quietly. "But we at least have to try to set things right. Don't you think?"

"You're right," Elizabeth said with the comforting smile Katrina knew so well and that she had missed so much. "But that doesn't mean it isn't wise to ask for help."

"Yup," Meliodas said from behind the counter, "and dealing with threats of all kinds of scale just so happens to be our secondary sort of income. So, for the right paycheck, the Seven Deadly Sins will be at your service."

Meliodas ignored Elizabeth's complaint about how he could threaten people in need with payment, and studied the strangers in his tavern once more.

"You _have _heard of the legendary Seven Deadly Sins, right?" he asked and set the mug he had been holding aside.

"Yes," Lance answered truthfully, only to be undercut by Ivy's groggily mumbled 'No'.

Meliodas grinned. "Looks like your friends can't agree on a story to sell," he said and winked at Katrina. She couldn't help but smile back at him just as widely.

"All we've heard were rumors," Lance tried to stir back from his and Ivy's mismatched responses. "You won't happen to be a member of such a famous group of Holy Knights?"

"The one and only Captain of the Sins, Meliodas. And this is my partner in crime, the third princess of Liones, Elizabeth. And the ill-behaved moron from the kitchen is Ban."

"I've heard that, Cap'n," Ban said as he emerged from said kitchen with three plates of steaming food balancing dangerously in his hands.

The prospect of food signaled by the mouth-watering smell, awakened Ivy from her collapsed state, and Katrina threw the food numerous longing looks as well. Each plate held an enormous slate of meat of unclear origin that almost drowned under a collection of mushrooms and potato slices. It could have been any kind of dish, and Katrina would have praised it as the best thing she had eaten all her life. Ban's cocking had always been a special treat, but with how much she had come to miss food that tickled her nose with excitement when placed in front of her in the past days, her appreciation rose to new heights.

Ivy looked dangerously close to falling around her uncle's neck, but she stopped herself in time, mustered a 'Thanks', and attacked her plate like an animal on the brink of starvation. In no time, the food vanished out of existence, prompting Lance to offer her a good chunk of his own meat that she reluctantly but gratefully accepted.

Ban and Elizabeth watched them devour their food, both a little concerned.

"When _was_ the last time you had something to eat?" Ban asked but received no answer beyond excessive chewing sounds. "Must've been a while," he figured.

"We can't let them fight some ominous threat, not in the condition they are in," Elizabeth said and turned to Meliodas. He, too, had taken his time to watch the three children, an empty mug forgotten in his hand.

"Elizabeth, we can't force ourselves onto them. They aren't of the open, help-seeking type, and our team got disbanded for a reason. Not to mention there's an anniversary we're in the middle of planning. Besides, these kids haven't done as much as introduce themselves."

The jab behind the last sentence was clear as daylight, and Katrina felt a pinch of guilt for being so terribly mannered, and to her parents no less.

Ivy, who had at last set aside her plate, found her voice first. "My name's Ivy."

Lance jerked in alarm as Ivy used her real name, but the demanding stares of Meliodas, Elizabeth, and his father didn't help him come up with a cover name faster. "Lancelo– just Lance is fine," he said miserably.

"Katrina." She felt awkward about introducing herself to her parents and suddenly found great fascination in the task of shipping a piece of onion across the gravy on her plate with her fork.

"Great!" Meliodas said and clapped his hands. "Now that we're all accustomed, how 'bout ya tell us about that thing you wanna deal with? Just so we know what we're up against."

The deliberate use of the word 'we' didn't pass Katrina by unnoticed, and from the loving gaze Elizabeth gifted Meliodas, she had caught his intentions as well. As much as her dad had played disinterested, Katrina knew that he, like Elizabeth, was incapable of turning his back to someone in need. Whether that meant a town of people in jeopardy, a group of mismatched sinners from all corners of Britannia, or three kids who hadn't had anything decent to eat for the last week.

"It'd probably be best to save the lengthy explanations for later," Ban said. With a smug grin, he turned to the group of youths. "You're super lucky, ya know? On any other day, it'd have taken us forever to assemble the whole gang. Well, you've already seen the best of the bunch, so don't expect –"

"And with 'best of the bunch' you hopefully aren't talking about yourself, Ban," someone interrupted from the entrance door.

The brown-haired woman skipped onto the scene with the grace and youthful energy of a dancer, setting each step lightly as if in preparation for a twirl. Her two pigtails hopped up and down in perfect rhythm, and she beamed at the room with an openness that knew no judgement.

"And _that_ is my lovely sister-in-law, Diane," Ban whispered with a mocking tone, loud enough for Diane to perfectly understand him.

Right behind Diane, a second figure passed the doorframe and looked over the strange gathering. Ivy froze still. Hardly more composed, Lance took hold of Ivy's shoulder to ensure she stayed seated.

Ban laughed at Ivy's dead expression and pat her hair in what he presumed to be a friendly manner. Hair in the exact same shade of dark honey as the hair of the latest newcomer.

"What, you've never seen a Fairy before?"

* * *

Errin had finished her business with the local blacksmith rather quickly and strolled through Liones' market alley in hopes of fetching something to eat for herself. With a little luck, she might even run in to the rest of her group, which would spare them the reunion time later. They had agreed to rejoin at the undergrowth at which Ivy and Lance had previously hidden their weapons, a move born more out of caution then necessity; most people tended to get nervous around armed strangers.

That rule applied to Errin as well, and she garnered a couple of curious gawps that quickly tuned into unease once the spectators realized she had noticed their staring. Armored and equipped with a heavy broadsword, she was bound to attract attention, and the blacksmith had regarded the fine craftsmanship behind her gear with undisguised jealousy. But she had wanted to return her weapon to top condition before she had to face off against an army of Colossai, especially since her only backup were two spoiled children and one Holy Knight _in training_. The right grindstone would have done the trick too, but Errin wasn't eager to take chances, not with her best weapon.

At this time of day, the market alley Errin wandered up and down was buzzing with activity. Peddlers sold off their goods for prices that should warn everyone about those items' questionable heritage, groups of kids ran past the stalls to beg for some leftovers from the man selling bakery produce, and once in a while, Errin even snatched a glimpse at another knight.

She was about to spend her remaining savings on a bowl of stew – although the exact currency she used didn't exist yet, the value of the metal was undeniable – when someone quite literally materialized themselves out of the thin air next to her.

"Gaius?!" she asked, and her eyebrows shot up in surprise.

He was about the last person she had expected to run into, considering the fact that she had thought him, quite frankly, _dead_.

"Errin, Holy Knight of Camelot and member of the royal court. Credited with the liberation of the Castle of Sorrow as well as various other accomplishments in the name of Camelot," Gaius said. And if Errin had been less familiar with his odd way to interact with people, she would have judged his words as blunt mockery.

He was a half a foot shorter than her, and his longer, raven-colored hair was tied back in the same style he had always preferred to wear it. His small form almost disappeared within his dark robes and black coat, and the ever-same silver pendant dangled around his neck, a collection of carved ornaments and runes that held little meaning to Errin. To make up for the difference in height or simply to show off, Gaius rose from the ground and brought his blue eyes to the same level as Errin's.

"What are you doing here?!" Errin asked, her tone hostile out of urgency for an explanation.

"The exact way I ended up here would take too long to explain, and the details would be wasted on you anyway," Gaius answered. He had always favored an unfiltered way of putting things, but the unintentional insult still threw Errin off; harmed feelings seemed to be an estranged concept for him.

"I have a question though, why do you happen to traverse Liones from twenty years into the past, and what does Katrina have to do with it?" he continued. Per usual, he gave her more riddles than answers.

Errin felt the eyes of multiple market visitors on her back, and the man from the stew stall squinted his eyes at Errin's unwilling companion, so she decided it would be best to discuss the matter in a more remote location. Gaius should know better than to talk about time travel in a populated area as this one.

Ignoring his protests, Errin grabbed Gaius by the sleeve and directed him out of the bulk of civilians. While he was clever enough to shut his mouth, he was obviously not content with the way Errin was handling the situation and tried a few times to set his arm free. At least he refrained from magical force.

Once they escaped the crowded market alley, Errin felt safe enough to begin answering Gaius' questions. "Short version: Liones was invaded and the Sins were killed. I'm here with Katrina, Lancelot, and Ivy to prevent that from happening."

The blood drained from Gaius' face at her brusque retelling of events, but she offered him no time to properly process the information.

"What do you know about the Colossai?" she asked.

Gaius swallowed his shock and reverted to a walking encyclopedia. "The Colossai are beings forged out of rocks and magic, and are said to have been created thousands of years ago, before the escalation of the Holy War. In height, they tower over even the tallest members of the Giant Clan, and their prowess in battle exceeds most opponents trained in physical combat. No individual conscious or intelligence has been proven, but some suggest that they are, in fact, able to communicate. The Colossai were sealed three thousand years ago and have not been encountered since, though rumors suggest their seal was broken due to the power imbalance following the defeat of the Demon Clan. Throughout the past twenty years, sightings of them have been reported in the Highlands, but none have definitive proof. Why?"

"Because those are the foes we'll have to face off against," Errin answered. "Without the Colossai, The Fall of Liones will never happen, and the others get their parents back."

Gaius contemplated her statement while brushing his thumb across his chin on repeat. Errin had a few more questions for him that demanded answering, but she thought it would be wise to leave him for now.

"And you now plan on using the Sins to deal with the Colossai?" Gaius finally asked. But for once, he had come to the wrong conclusion.

"That's exactly what we _don't_ want to do. If we interact with anyone from this time too much, we will inevitably screw with the stream of time, isn't that right?"

Gaius regarded her with a mixture of confusion and amusement. "That is true. As Merlin liked to put it, meddling with the natural current of time bears the risk of disastrous consequences. But that raises the question why Katrina is currently at the Boar Hat in the company of her parents, if you are so determined to avoid that exact scenario?"

To say the question confused her, would have been an understatement. Unfortunately, Gaius had the tendency to be right almost one-hundred percent of the time, so Errin had no compelling reason to distrust him on the matter.

"How do you know that?" she snapped, unable to restrain her anger.

"Location-based spell. _Sumetumaro nokote_, if you want to know. That was how I found you in the first place."

Errin internally fumed. Where these three idiots that incapable? Sure, she would have trusted Katrina to be missing her parents a little too much – she was merely twelve years old after all – and Ivy was short-sighted by nature, but for Lance to agree to this folly proved that she had been putting undeserved faith into him.

Without another word to Gaius, Errin stormed off to where she remembered the Boar Hat to be located. If she didn't act now, everything might be ruined, and for good this time. Because once their parents' behavior would be affected in a way counter to the usual, Errin wasn't sure if there even was a way to make that mistake undone. The change could start with the Sins giving their children different names and lead all the way to some of them never being born in the first place.

"Storming the castle without a plan at hand is bound to only worsen the problem," Gaius said. Due to levitation, he kept up with Errin's relentless march with ease.

He had a point, but Errin wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of seeing the admission reflect on her face. Instead, she let her mind run wild with possibilities to prevent the upcoming disaster. If luck was on her side, Katrina and the others hadn't revealed their names yet and hadn't stumbled into any other Sins. The Captain meeting them was bad enough, but with three children resembling different members of the Sins, anyone would eventually be able to put two and two together. Admittedly, all of them looked like regular humans on the surface level, which might deflect suspicion. But Errin doubted this benefit would be enough.

"Once Merlin arrives at the Boar Hat any attempt at deceiving the Sins will be nullified anyway," Gaius interrupted her thoughts. He was beginning to annoy her.

"And why should she plan on going there just now?"

Gaius raised an eyebrow with infuriating but unintentional smugness. "Because today is the anniversary of the separation of the Seven Deadly Sins. I find it quite strange that you chose this particular day to visit Liones."

Errin had no idea what Gaius was talking about, but it sounded as though getting her three comrades out of their self-inflicted dilemma was more urgent than ever.

"If you will allow it," Gaius said with the slightest hint of uncertainty, "I would be eager to aid you and Katrina in defeating the Colossai." He paused for a moment, as if unsure about continuing. "I, too, have lost something in the present. If the Colossai are the key to alter these events, I will assist you to the best of my abilities."

There was no reason to deny his request. While Errin liked to keep her distance to Gaius because of their non-mutual interests as well as his alien behavior, she knew deep-down he was a good kid. And a skilled magician to boost. He might even know how to correctly use the Time Crystal, which would allow Katrina to be kept out of harm's way.

"Do as you please," she answered.

"I thank you for your consent," he said with a slight bow, but his display of gratitude ended up looking more laughable than he intended, simply because the action was not meant to be performed mid-air.

They neared Liones' southern gates through a stream of travelers and townsfolk and dove into the shadows of the cities outer walls. Gaius avoided the hassle of the crowd by levitating overhead, but Errin needed to fight her way against the current with a grim look more than once. Clusters of people were a nuisance. But once the city-walls lay behind them, the Boar Hat would only be a short distance away.

Which meant Errin needed to come up with a convincing story to get Katrina and the others away from the Sins in what little time she had left. If it wasn't already too late.

* * *

There they both stood. Alive.

Clueless as to what would happen to them in the future, clueless as to what their daughter would witness. Clueless even as to who Ivy was.

"Yo, King, Diane, great timing on your part, we're about to get a new mission," Meliodas said, but his words didn't make it through the maelstrom of Ivy's thoughts.

Her mom paid no mind to the strangers and hurried to greet Elizabeth with a hug. Her dad, on the other hand, looked the unfamiliar faces up and down, his head tilted in thought. If he were to read Ivy's heart right now, all secrets would be revealed, since Ivy was inaudibly screaming at him with a storm of relief, regret, longing, and firmly planted sadness.

But if he was curious about the stranger's intentions, he made no move to show it and turned to Meliodas instead. "Weren't the Seven Deadly Sins officially disbanded on your behalf five years ago?"

"Sure, officially. But that was just so that not everyone comes running to me with their problems. Lil' Gil and Arthur should get a chance being plagued with the worries of others too, dontcha think?"

King brushed the joking comment aside and refocused on the three youths at the table. His jawline hardened, and a question was burning in his eyes; something about the strangers incurred his displeasure. Ivy stared into the face that had once gifted her with love and understanding. For a brief moment, their glances met, and the room around Ivy disappeared into fire and blood to turn into the scenery where she had last seen him.

Lance's fingers burying themselves into Ivy's arm gave her the anchor she needed to stay sane. The look he gave her overflowed with deep concern, and if he had noticed her unease, the others might do so as well.

"I'm sorry," Ivy heard herself say, with a voice that sounded a hundred miles away. "I need a bit of air."

Her legs at the verge of trembling, Ivy stormed past her father and out of the door. Her muscles and breathing fell into the unsteady mode of flight as she trampled on the cushions of grass in her path, and her throat tasted of exhaustion and the meal she had devoured too rapidly. She kept running until the remains of her strength faded, and she collapsed onto the ground to find solace in the welcoming carpet of clover and daisies. Her lungs craved for the oxygen she had found missing in the crowded Boar Hat, and with the lack of air, the dizziness and emotional instability returned.

She took a deep breath and sat up straight to stare at the cloudless sky above. The soft sounds of rustling leaves and grass dancing with the wind brought her calm like nothing inside would have been able to, and the sunbeams pushed the dark hands of panic away.

Once her heartbeat had calmed to a normal rate, Ivy became aware of his presence.

"How long have you been standing there?" she asked. She didn't need to turn around to see him, she knew the sound of his steps almost as well as she knew her own; an attentive walk that placed each foot with care.

"I'm sorry to disturb you," Lance said, the ever-same concern blatantly apparent. "I told the others that crowded rooms make you nervous." An excuse not far from the truth. "To be honest, I'm worried. About you, about that dark magic that consumes Katrina every time she uses that forsaken crystal, and about the all too real possibility that we will fail in preventing The Fall. All of this is way over my head, so I wanted to at least make sure you aren't tearing yourself down."

Ivy turned to look at him. He was genuine. "And then you left Katrina all alone in the cave of the dragon?"

The poor joke caused Lance to be guilt-ridden rather than amused. But after a heartbeat, he reciprocated her uncertain, lopsided smile.

"I think it might be better if we do ask our parents for help," Lance said thoughtfully. "We want to optimize our winning chances, so what better way to do this than by making use of the seven most overpowered beings in all Britannia. Because, let's be honest here, we all suck at fighting."

"So, your training under Jericho didn't pay off? What a waste. Don't let Errin hear about it, or she'll stare you to death," Ivy said with the ghost of a grin.

"Please spare me _that_ punishment. It'll be bad enough telling her that we've run into our parents and now want to go Colossai hunting with them. I can't wait for her to behead me." He sighed in overplayed fashion and threw his hands up in prayer for his soul.

In this very moment, Ivy was beyond thankful for Lance's ability to make her see past the fears that haunted her. Without him, she doubted to have been able to place as much as the first step away from Liones after The Fall. But the weak words of gratitude died in her throat before she was able to voice them.

"If you feel better now, we should better get back inside before Katrina spills all our deepest secrets," Lance said, and Ivy took to the suggestion and followed him back to the Boar Hat.

It struck her with irony that it had also been the place where their adventure had initially started.

But before they reached the porch, they were stopped by a warning called out from behind them. Ivy was neither thrilled nor surprised to recognize the voice as Errin's, but upon turning around, she did stop dead in her tracks at the sight of Errin's companion.

"Gaius?!" Lance and Ivy blurted out in shared disbelief.

Gaius elegantly dropped out of the levitation spell he had used on himself and greeted Lance and Ivy with a bow of his head.

"Please don't tell me Katrina is inside there with her parents," Errin said before Ivy had a chance to ask how Gaius had managed to time-travel and find them.

"Not just her own parents, actually," Lance corrected and turned to Gaius. "I'm so glad to see you're alright, pal. What happened back there? Errin told us you disappeared. And how'd you even get here?"

"It would be too long of a story to tell for the moment," Gaius dismissed the barrage before Ivy could add her own questions to the mix. "I suppose you have changed your plans regarding the involvement of your parents?"

"Yeah, we're not exactly well equipped to face a horde of Colossai," Lance said, causing Errin to huff because of how rudely her own opinion on the matter was disregarded.

"The Colossai are dangerous foes to face, indeed," Gaius confirmed.

Ivy steeled herself against Errin's unforgiving glares. "Look Errin, we pretty much ran into Meliodas and Elizabeth by accident. And this isn't something you get to decide just because Mordred is responsible for all this in the first place. This is about saving _our _families."

Errin raised her chin in defiance but made no sound to approve or object their course of action. As long as she stayed out of the way, her sulkiness was fine enough with Ivy.

"Great, now that that's settled, we can all get inside and start introducing you two," Lance said to end the discussion.

Once back inside, the heads of four Sins plus Elizabeth turned to face the newcomers. Katrina, who was still seated between Elizabeth and Ban, gaped in surprise at Gaius but restraint herself from raising her voice to him. He returned the gaze with a concerning mixture of awe and fascination, and Ivy felt involuntarily reminded of Merlin whenever she came across a new specimen to do research on.

"Huh, are those your friends too?" Ban asked, and Katrina confirmed with a nod.

"Those are Gaius and Errin," Lance introduced. "They had a few businesses to solve in Liones, and we didn't think about mentioning them earlier."

"That's not a problem at all," Elizabeth ensured with a smile. "You two must be hungry as well."

But both of them declined, Errin solely out of anger towards the quandary she had been dragged into. Ivy couldn't claim to feel sorry for her.

Even Lance's well-meant attempt to formally introduce the Sins to Errin and Gaius was blocked by a blunt interruption. "Those are the Seven Deadly Sins. I know all their names."

"At least one of them remembers that she knows us," Meliodas said with a grin to overplay Errin's ill-disposed remark. "So, how 'bout you'll start explaining some of the context to us? Katrina's been pretty tight-lipped while you were absent."

His and the eyes of most other people in the room rested on Lance. And although Errin had the experience to show for, the role of leadership fell into Lance's hands by the assumption of the Sins alone. Whichever path he wanted their group to take lay in his control.

"So, all five of us live in the kingdom of Camlann to the north," Lance began his story. "In case you don't know, it's a small kingdom hidden away in Britannia's Highlands. We usually don't attract much interest from other armies because of that, and the New Holy War passed us by without much harm too. But our home has recently been under attack by forces that no one was able to stand against. Many villages were destroyed, including our homes. We now know that Colossai were responsible for it. Ivy's the only one who has seen one of them up close and lives to tell the tale. We fear that they will go as far as to advance to the capital itself and wipe out all of Camlann. Our military forces are isolated and poorly organized, and there are hardly any Holy Knights with magical abilities among their ranks, so we came to Liones to ask the king for his aid."

All around, silence befell the room in the absence of Lance's voice. Elizabeth looked at the group of kids with endless compassion but lacked the words of support Ivy had expected from her. Meliodas' face had darkened.

"You said your homes were attacked by Colossai?" Diane asked, and her interlaced fingers resumed fidgeting in her lap.

"Yes," Ivy said, as Lance's story painted her as the expert on the matter. It wasn't even a lie, she _had_ come awfully close to the Colossai in Liones, and she still recalled the force with which one of them had broken through a line of houses to make it rain debris and dust. "They are at least sixty feet in height, like massive Giants made out of stone."

Ivy had anticipated her mom reacting to the word Giant phrased in such a negative context, but the amount of hurt that crossed Diane's face then had Ivy wish to be able to take her words back. King placed a supportive hand on Diane's shoulder, and she repaid him by squeezing his hand with her own. But a trace of bitterness remained in her expression. Ivy had seen her parents interact with this unspoken familiarity countless times before, but she had never noticed it the way she did now; it reminded her that her parents were dead and the two people Ivy had hurt with her careless words were living on borrowed time.

"Anyone care to explain what the big deal is with those Colossai things?" Ban asked and earned a glare from King for his tactlessness.

Gaius opened his mouth, undoubtedly to recite the perfect textbook explanation, but he was silenced by a jab from Lance's elbow.

"I think we should let Merlin do the explaining once she finally shows up," Meliodas said.

As if the Captain's words had summoned a ghost, Merlin suddenly manifested herself into the room. Gaius shifted awkwardly in his mentor's presence.

"Always a pleasure to do so," Merlin said and made the confusion complete with her ability to answer Meliodas despite having been absent when he had spoken. Rallying in the attention, Merlin turned her head to inspect the unknown individuals before showcasing a sly smile. "But first, I believe it is your turn to explain a few things, Captain."

Considering Merlin and her ways of knowing things by miracle, Ivy was certain Merlin already knew exactly who they were. And based on the panicked faces of Lance and Katrina, they thought the same.


	8. The Inner Balance

Katrina was panicking. There was no nice way to frame the disaster that was bound to arise because of Merlin's appearance. Fooling her parents had been one thing, but Merlin was an entirely different caliber, one that was impossible to fool. For as unfathomable Merlin tended to be, Katrina could swear there now lay a hint of superior knowledge in Merlin's expression, one that could only indicate that their ruse had already been torn apart and was about to be exposed to the rest of the Sins. Katrina needed time to _think_, think through the situation and come up with some plan to at least delay the words Merlin was undoubtedly mere seconds away from using against them.

Katrina's hands, that had previously rested in her lap, vanished into the debts of her dress's pockets, in search for the Time Crystal. Her fingers found the sharp edges of the magical item, and she calmed a little when her fist closed around the familiar shape. This time, the words needed for the incantation came to her without delay, and as soon as _atemoto dureshi_ fully formed in her head, the world came to a hold. The dust particles that had been dancing in the light above the table hovered frozen in place, their spiraling performance cut short. When Katrina released a shaky breath, the small dancers awoke from their slumber and drifted away, until the air unstirred, and they remained motionless once more. Katrina had successfully stopped time.

"You should know that magic such as that has no effect on me," Merlin cut into Katrina's relief and made her jump.

While everyone else had gone still with the looks of convincingly lively statues, Merlin commanded the center of the room with her arms casually crossed. From her levitated position, she whipped a foot and looked down on Katrina with an amused expression.

"I'm quite curios as to how you managed a spell that does not merely effect the perception of time but time itself," Merlin continued, as if this were a simple conversation held over tea. "But then again, too much knowledge of the future might have negative consequences, even for me."

Katrina decided that trying to deny any of Merlin's assumptions was pointless. "How did you find out?" she asked in defeat.

"You hold magical powers from both the Demon and Celestial Realm. The rest was a guessing game, but since a few of your friends aren't as human as they make out to be either, the answer was quite clear."

Despite Errin's warnings, Katrina no longer cared about keeping secrets because all she wanted was for Merlin to work her magic and seal the Colossai for eternity, so that all of them could go back home. Regardless of how childish this wish was. "In the future, the Sins will die in an event that involves the Colossai. We didn't know what else to do, other than stopping them in the past, before they could turn into a greater threat."

Merlin tapped her chin, deep in thought. "Sometimes, it is better to move on rather than dwell on past happenings, a truth I have denied too often myself." Katrina slumped in her chair, weighed down by what she knew deep down to be true: they had never been supposed to change anything. Time was a fragile thing, and they had approached this central force with all the care of an earthquake, and the more they changed, the more they might destroy in the process. Merlin had told her these warnings before. But Katrina had chosen to ignore them to instead pour all her efforts into a journey that might well turn out hopeless after all.

"But your father isn't one to listen to those advises of mine either, so I won't be surprised if you chose to continue with your plan. You certainly do not need my consent. And I must admit, I would not mind if your actions help prolong my life. I have too many discoveries to make to simply die." A tender smile formed on Merlin's lips; Katrina could only think of a handful of people who the Mage smiled at with this much warmth.

"Thank you, Merlin," Katrina said earnestly, and Merlin's smile remained for a few seconds longer.

"One last word of advice before you set everything back to normal," Merlin said, the personification of seriousness once more. "Whatever it is that allows you to control time as effectively as you do, it disrupts your inner magic, more and more severely as we speak. Only ever use this power in times of absolute need. The consequences might be even less desirable than the condition you want to alter."

Merlin's tone, swinging with unrest, send a shiver down Katrina's spine, and the crystal suddenly felt colder in her hand. Most of the times, Katrina had only dealt with unconsciousness after using the Time Crystal, but when she had first snapped out of its spell back in Merlin's lab in Camelot, Lance had said she had turned into 'Demon mode'. And while he and Errin had ensured nothing more severe had happened the following times, Katrina suspected they had lied about it.

She had always feared her Demon powers, ever since she had lost control over it at a young age. From that point onward, Katrina had avoided fighting or any situation with the potential to upset her enough to repeat the horrifying experience. Ivy and Lance knew about the incident and how it had affected her, which would explain why they had been so quiet whenever a conversation had drifted towards the crystal during the past days of travel. But their insurances remained lies nonetheless.

As she concentrated on the magic within her, Katrina could feel the ghost of disorder, a dark tumor growing steadily, its whole life purpose to consume. She recoiled from the darkness, afraid of the immense power pulling her in to drown in its depths. The darkness reached out with hazy arms, slow in its movements, its strength not yet awakened. Or it was so sure of itself that it saw no need in haste. Seven hearts hitched in Katrina's chest, each one driven by the wish to escape, each one beating against the cage of her ribs like frightened prisoners.

But fear was Katrina's strongest enemy. Fear fed the darkness. So Katrina, hardly aware of her body, clenched the dark item in her hand tighter and focused on the beacon of light that was her Goddess power. Warmth spread through her veins in comforting waves when she tapped into the pool of calm. She held onto the light meant to purge the darkness and at last broke free of the crystal's hold. The spell dispersed and time flowed with its natural current once more.

Katrina felt sick, and the familiar exhaustion washed over her all the same, but she remained conscious. Maybe it was because the spell hadn't lasted as long, or because she had managed to reclaim the stability between her two inner factions in time. The effect was the same.

"Sure thing," Meliodas answered Merlin, unaware that she had already received most of the desired information thanks to her time-frozen chat with Katrina. "The kingdom of Camlann's been under attack by Colossai, and these five kids wanna use the help of the Seven Deadly Sins to deal with the threat."

"How very interesting," Merlin said, her tone bar of the supposed interest. "And is there already a consensus on whether we are going to help?"

"Ya can't be serious with that question," Ban said but was silenced by Meliodas.

"No consensus so far. And it's better if we put that on hold until Gowther and Escanor get here. Ya know anything 'bout them, Merlin?"

"They're on their way here."

"Great," Meliodas said. "For now, everyone underage can collect their thoughts in the guestroom. Two stairways up and then the only door to the right. Ya won't be able to miss it." He dismissed the group with a shooing gesture directed towards the bottom of the mentioned stairway.

Ivy opened her mouth in protest – Katrina imagined because she rather wanted to wait outside – but Lance took hold of her arm and proceeded to follow Meliodas' instructions, Gaius and the grimly staring Errin on his heels.

At the stairs' foot, Katrina turned around once more to fetch an empathetic smile from her mom. The remaining people clustered in the bar's main room were only waiting for her to leave, to start discussing the fate of Katrina's and her friends' mission. Not all the looks resting on Katrina were as friendly as Elizabeth's.

Uneasy from those thoughts, Katrina followed the others upstairs to the room that would one day be hers but for now served as a guest room to be rented to an overly tired or drunken traveler if need be. Despite having climbed these stairs a million times, Katrina stumbled over her feet when she reached the third floor.

As soon as she closed the door behind her, the epitome of chaos erupted.

"What Demon possessed all of you to not only involve the Sins but to give them all the information they need to figure out you are lying to them?!" Errin burst out. "Have you ever considered that, as soon as they do a little research, they'll find out that Camlann is perfectly fine?"

"I wanna see you try come up with a complete story on the go," Ivy said equally venomous. "Lance did as well as he could, while you were busy brooding over how to make everyone in sight your enemy! If all you can do is complain, you should go straight back to Camelot. Or better yet, go back to the present and pretend everything is fine and dandy."

Lance, thrown out of balance a little by how vehemently Ivy had defended him, stepped in before Errin could level counter-accusations. "Well in any case, you'll be relieved to hear that we won't have a problem if the Sins dig a little deeper. Because Camlann _was_ recently attacked."

Backed into a corner, the confusion in Errin's face was plain as day as she struggled with a response.

"That is true," Gaius said. Levitating in a lying position, he had ignored the conversation thus far, his eyes buried in the small book he had produced from his pockets. And while he never averted his eyes from the book, he did continue in his monotone lecture voice. "Around five years after the New Holy War, remote villages in Camlann were raided and destroyed. Stories arose about creatures matching the description of Colossai. Historians concur, however, that the culprits were merely a handful of lower-class Demons that had escaped before the rift to the Demon Realm was at last closed. These events fall into the exact time frame we are living in right now."

"Thanks, Gaius, couldn't have said it better," Lance said, but his gratefulness could have just as well targeted the wall since Gaius had mentally phased out of the discussion.

"That doesn't solve the problem that you used all or real names," Errin said, determined to find the one glaring flaw they would not be able to brush aside.

Katrina felt obligated to support Lance. "I understand your worries, but taking out the Colossai to prevent The Fall is more important than anything else. Once we've saved our families, everything will sort itself out. I want to believe that."

Her words hammered the final nail into the coffin to Errin's arguments, and she fell silent before rushing past Katrina out of the door. The steps of the rundown ladder leading to the fourth floor creaked as Errin fled into the attic. The build-up tension vanished alongside her, and Lance dropped face-first into the soft pillows of the bed dominating the small room with an overly dramatic groan. Ivy huddled up against the frame of the single window and let her head rest on her knees.

All they had left to do was wait. Wait for their parents to come to a conclusion to their discussion. And while Katrina knew her mom would vouch for the Sins to help, she wasn't sure whether she would succeed in swaying the others. Not when they had any right to doubt the group of strangers who had been reluctant to reveal information about themselves. Karina would not even be able to judge them if they were to deny their help. But she was determined to keep on going, even if she was the only one to stand against the Colossai, even if her chances were nonexistent, and all she tried was hopeless.

Because she could not accept the loss of her parents.

* * *

Gaius had no problem reading and following a conversation unfolding in the background at the same time, and he was able to jump between thought processes in much the same fashion other people switched moods. His talent for multitasking had come in handy before, in particular during experimentations that involved multiple moving parts at once, and this ability allowed him to take notice of Errin's over-boiling emotions without the need to actively observe her.

For as little as he knew her, he could claim to have anticipated her furious departure. Downstairs, in the presence of the Sins, she had restraint herself, but once she had left their earshot, the steaming kettle gave way under the constant pressure, and Errin yelled at Lance without acknowledging the bigger picture. Gaius wondered what compelled Errin to act as unforgiving as she did. So far, he was missing the key piece to explain her motivation for joining Katrina's group in the first place.

… _current of time takes great effort and mental stability, making it an artform not many can hope to master to even a basic extent. It is advised…_

Errin was, however, only the lesser of Gaius' fascinations he hoped to soon understand. Katrina was the other and far more intriguing one.

Upon realizing that Katrina had managed to not only journey backwards through time – a singularity he had laid eyes on in the Time Realm in the form of manipulated time strings – but had also taken three individuals with less magic potential with her, Gaius had deducted that Katrina had used Merlin's magical item number 307 to do so. And during the meeting with the Sins, right after Merlin had appeared on the spot, Gaius had noticed a shift in the magical energy in the room, a force powerful enough to throw the scales of magic off balance. He was certain he had not been the only one to notice the faint, insidious aura, as both the Captain and the Fairy King had unintentionally reacted. A seemingly unfounded shift in attention or an equally unexplained heightened tension in the form of a hardened jawline or a darkened expression proved as much.

By eliminating the options, Gaius safely assumed Katrina had caused the disruption, likely by using the Time Crystal.

Gaius possessed mere theoretical knowledge regarding the usage of the Time Crystal, since Merlin had forbidden him to use it. Her instructions would not have been sufficient to stop him in other cases, knowledge was power after all, but the urgency with which his mentor had phrased her orders had left a lasting impression, stark enough to compel him to never test out the object himself.

He had, however, studied the crystal on its surface level and had at least drawn some conclusions out of these examinations. Firstly, the crystal was, in fact, not made out of frozen water or condensed carbon as its name suggested but rather an artificial metal that had been polished until it visually resembled the shape of a crystal. And secondly, this metal crystallite housed a tremendous amount of magic potential and served as a vessel for a spell so powerful it threatened to break free of its confinement.

… _the consequences of which are not entirely explored yet, for most records on this particular field of magic have vanished during the destruction of…_

Merlin's warning paired with his own research had resulted in the firm belief that the crystal should not be used by anyone under any circumstances, which begged the question as to why Merlin had forged this particular item in the first place. On that matter, Gaius could only guess. After all, Merlin only ever talked with caution when he brought up time magic, and her research notes on the topic were stored someplace Gaius had no knowledge of, so he had been forced to resort to Camelot's royal library in order to complete his study notes on this field of magic.

It would be best, if he informed Katrina about the dangers of the Time Crystal before she used it again. Some darker magical artifacts had the potential to turn their user into a devotee, who would then be obliged to feed the artifact with magical energy until the user's force expired. Forever.

And Gaius doubted the Time Crystal to be free of equally twisted intentions.

… _avoid these complications, a sacrificial host can be an option, but this is generally perceived as unethical._

Gaius closed his book upon finishing the paragraph and returned his full attention towards his surroundings. Ivy and Lancelot both rested where he had last seen them after Errin's departure, next to the window and on the bed respectively. But Katrina was nowhere to be seen. Gaius blinked a few times at the empty spot where he had been certain to have last seen her and scolded himself for letting his thoughts black out his perception of the outside world. Using the command _umaro_, Gaius dispelled his self-inflicted levitation enchantment and left the room to look for Katrina.

He found her with ease, on the balcony attached to the attic, her head and folded arms rested on the railing. Night had arrived unnoticed to him, and the first stars lightened the sky. At this time of year, the constellation of the Escaped Goddess could be seen clearly in her preparation to hunt the White Stag across the firmament. An orchestra of crickets carried their symphony through the dark.

If Katrina took notice of Gaius, she did not show it in any action or shift in body-language but continued to look out into the open, across the canopy and towards the vast sky beyond. All carefully laid out words and advises were lost to Gaius, and he no longer knew how to approach her. So, he remained a few feet behind her, where the warm air from inside tickled his neck, in a struggle with himself that could well go on for the rest of the night if Katrina would not release him beforehand.

Maybe it was the sound of his breath or the wind brushing through his robes, but at last, Katrina did turn around to look at him. "I'm sorry, Gaius. How long have you been waiting there?" she asked, with a voice so sweet it could make the strongest wills tumble.

"I wanted to ask you a few things, about the Time Crystal in particular," Gaius evaded. "Mainly how you managed to use it as efficiently as you have thus far."

"You know I have it?"

He paused for a second, realizing he had once more failed to express his train of thought to the outside world in an understandable manner. "I… made a good guess."

"I found it in your room, you know," Katrina said. "Merlin's entire lab was ransacked when we got there. I think whoever did this had to have been looking for the crystal."

Gaius tapped his chin in thought as he weighed the variables. He had taken the Time Crystal upstairs with the intent to store it for a later inspection when the knights of Camelot had arrived, that much he knew for certain, but the following events had fallen into disorder in his memories. Every time his mind reached for the answer, Merlin's expression when she had sent him into the Time Realm tore itself back before his inner eye. A look of utter terror.

"I do not think you should use the Time Crystal anymore," Gaius said. "Its magic is far more powerful than you might think, dangerous even. It will cause more harm than good, I am certain of it."

"Merlin told me almost the exact same thing," Katrina said with a distant smile and caught his gaze with hers. "You two are more alike than you think."

He considered her observation, only to push the idea away. Merlin was a far greater individual in everything she did, while he could merely be called fortunate to have been allowed to study under her guidance. Without a grain of salt, he would compare Merlin to the sun while he himself shone no more brightly than a candle by comparison. He wondered if he should have felt flattered by Katrina's comment.

"If it makes you feel better, I promise to not use any more time magic, unless I don't have another choice, okay?" Gaius nodded carefully, equal parts grateful and relieved, despite the condition Katrina had woven into her promise. "In return, will you tell me how you ended up in the past and with Errin today?" Katrina asked.

"I saw you manipulating the time strings when I was in the Time Realm," Gaius answered but only earned hopelessly confused looks from Katrina because – and he should have known better – the terms he used were foreign to her. "Well, when Merlin's laboratory was invaded by Mordred's men, I was teleported away. I think it was Merlin who used a spell to transfer me to the Time Realm, generally regarded as the spatial manifestation of time. There, I saw time moving in strings to an invisible current. When some of them behaved strangely, I investigated in hopes of finding a way out of the Time Realm. And there I saw you."

Katrina did not appear fully convinced by Gaius' retelling of events, so he rephrased his thoughts. "What I mean by this is, because you used the Time Crystal, you also affected the rules in the Time Realm." She gave him a small nod, but he doubted to have managed to explain the chain of causality as well as he wanted to.

"In any case," Katrina said, "I'm glad you're here now. We can use your help."

He wanted to show his gratitude for the kind words she had granted him, but merely managed a small nod that drew forth another one of her enchanting smiles.

The persistent crickets replaced the sounds of conversation with their own chatter, and Katrina turned to watch the stars. Gaius remained behind her, wondering when gravity would start obeying the laws of physics again, so he would be free to leave Katrina and head back inside.

* * *

The longer the evening stretched, the more King wished to be able to trade the ongoing discussion for the anniversary party he had previously dreaded so much. At this point, he would even endure Ban's intoxicated escapades with thankfulness. But he had little saying in the matter, and so daylight vanished to be replaced by the handful of oil lamps on the tables around, and there was _still_ no end in sight.

"We can't turn them down now!" Elizabeth said, eager to defend her point of view for an additional time.

"Sure we could, and we probably even should," Meliodas said, far less enthusiastic. "We've agreed to not dwell in the matters of humans as much as we used to, and we'd all be better off if we keep that in mind." He paused, and his eyes fixed on his hands placed next to his mug of ale. He hadn't touched the drink once. "If we'll run into a situation that forces me to use my powers, we're all toast."

"We've pretty much signed up for the job already though," Ban reminded. "I won't let my reputation get damaged by your cowardice, Cap'n."

"Your reputation as a bandit or are you talking about something else?" Gowther asked in a tone that made it impossible to tell if he was joking or curious about the matter.

They had been arguing back and forth about helping the five kids in what had turned into a senseless loop, with points being brought up, solved, and brought up again in slight variation. And King had been tired of the argument from the start.

The others had all the freedom to decide if they wanted to help out or not, but he had other responsibilities to take care of, mainly the Fairy King's Forest. Leaving the place he had been chosen to protect had turned into a guilt trip in recent years, especially whenever Elaine was forced to guard the forest alone in the process. Now that the Holy War was over and the fiercest enemies dealt with, there should only remain minor threats in this world, but King found himself worrying all the same.

Even when putting that fact aside, King had trouble trusting a group of strangers who they knew little more about than their names. He had brought up his concerns after one of Elizabeth's vehement pledges in the stranger's favor but had only received a cryptic reassurance from Merlin. Still, something about the young blond one had thrown him off, a feeling of unease he was unable to describe with words. The strange aura coating her had tempted King to read the girl's heart, but he had fought the urge. Humans in particular were quite sensitive when it came to personal thoughts, and once King had gained better control over his ability to read the hearts of others, he had learned to respect their privacy barriers.

"They are just children. How can we deny our help to them?" Diane asked. She had been unusually quiet the whole time, and while King could guess the reason, he hadn't found the chance to ask her.

"I'm sure the Holy Knights of Liones are well equipped for the task," King said in hopes of easing her worries, but he ended up with quite the opposite effect.

"Why are _you_ so much against dealing with the Colossai, anyway?" Ban asked and aggressively wavered his mug in King's face. "Cause guess where those things are gonna end up after Camlann is wiped."

His argument was reasonable to an extent. Far in the north where the kingdom of Camlann was located, only a handful of human settlements dotted the map in between the steep cliffs of the Highlands, making the Fairy King's Forest the next best desirable target. If destruction was the goal the Colossai had in mind.

"I can better protect the forest when I'm _at _the forest," King clarified and placed the mug threatening to spill its content back on the table with a flick of his finger and a sprinkle of Fairy magic.

Ban, suddenly emptyhanded, narrowed his eyes. "How 'bout preventing the thing before it knocks at your door?"

"Maybe casting a vote will get us further in making a decision," Escanor said before King had the chance to counter Ban's point. When all eyes focused on him, night-time Escanor shrank in his chair, and he quickly steered backwards. "It was ju-just an idea, really…"

"No, ya made a good point Escanor," Meliodas said reassuringly and patted Escanor on the back, which caused the latter's face to sink even deeper into distress. "So, everyone's gonna either agree to help those five kids or not. No half-hearted excuses. Starting with you, Elizabeth."

"I understand your worries. But regardless of the points all of you made, I think we have to help them. We owe it to them and to the families and friends they've already lost."

Ban, who was sitting to Elizabeth's right, cast his vote next. "I'm with Elizabeth on this one. Plus, it'll be fun to get the gang back together for a mission."

King chose his words carefully, well aware that his opinion might upset some of his comrades. "I don't plan on stopping any of you if you choose to get involved. But my priorities lie with the Fairy King's Forest, and I firmly believe the humans are capable of handling the threat."

Meliodas acknowledged his decision with a nod, but Ban grumbled some less than pleasant curses under his breath. King had grown out of being affected by Ban's provocations some time ago though and instead waited patiently for Diane to make a choice.

Even without reading her heart, King felt the inner conflict she was working her way through. Seeing her face twisted in the image of uncertainty, he regretted making his call first, afraid his choice might have persuaded her in one or the other direction. He hated being separated from her, he felt miserable and incomplete whenever she was too far away for him to feel the familiar warmth of her magic presence, and that selfish voice in his head screamed with disapproval whenever she journeyed to Megadoza and her own clan. But he was willing to give her all the freedom she desired. So, if Diane decided to help the kids, he would not object. More likely, he would watch his resolution tumble and join her.

Diane averted her eyes before resuming to speak. "I… cannot vote." Her voice sounded farther away than it was, a matter not helped by the fact that Ban started complaining in King's other ear midway through Diane's admission.

"Come on, Diane, I was counting on you here!"

"Cut it, Ban," King growled and watched with increasing unease as Diane sank deeper into her seat. There was more to her distress, Ban's not entirely serious complaint was merely the tip of the iceberg.

King looked across the table at Meliodas with a silent request for an intervention, and the Captain thankfully complied. "Kay, I'm gonna let that pass for now, since we're an even number anyway. Depending on what the others say, I'm gonna get back to ya," he said and turned to invite the next vote. "Gowther?"

"As former knights of Liones, we have the duty to protect those inhabitants of Britannia who are unable to defend themselves. I vote for helping them against the Colossai. And I would be happy to fight alongside my precious comrades again after such a long time." Gowther let his eyes wander across the table to focus on each of them, but his smile seemed bitter, and King escaped eye contact after a heartbeat. One minute later, and King was already second-guessing his vote.

"I won't cast a vote either," Merlin picked up where Gowther left off. "I believe I have meddled in this affair too much as is."

In hindsight, King realized Merlin had remained distant during the whole discussion, despite usually churning out helpful knowledge with ease, no matter the topic. But something about the group of strangers had turned her surprisingly tightlipped, and she had observed the argument from behind the rim of her wineglass with an illegible expression.

After it became clear that Merlin was not going to explain herself further, all eyes darted to Escanor, who was in line to vote next. He jumped upon realizing the scrutiny and frantically looked left and right in search for someone else they could be staring at. "I-I think it would be better if we leave it to the Holy Knights this time. Five years ago, we officially disbanded because all major threats had been dealt with, and there were others well-suited for protecting mankind. I believe that point still stands."

King was surprised to hear night-time Escanor going against the popular vote, and based on the startled expressions all around, he had not been the only one caught off guard.

"Which means the vote stands three against two," Merlin summarized after a few beats of stunned silence. "It seems you can still evoke a tie, Captain."

The conflict Meliodas attempted to bury inside, showed on his face regardless of his best attempts, and he blindly stared at the even surface of his ale, the froth of which had long disappeared. He had previously made compelling arguments for and against the case, his reluctance mostly fueled by the dangers of his powers.

When the New Holy War had passed its peak, and only the Demon King himself had remained as a threat, Meliodas had been so powerful that his presence alone had evoked chaos and destruction in the mortal plain. And while he could now bury and to an extant control this force, there was no telling when there might come an incident where he could not.

Well aware of the expectant gazes lying on him, Meliodas made the final call. "Then I guess we're gonna help them and get to enjoy the pretty sights of the Highlands. Unless someone wants to change their vote." For an outsider, his jovial tone might have successfully masked his inner turmoil. "So, I'll see all who wanna join in tomorrow morning. For the rest, I won't stop you if ya got other plans in mind, but I just wanna remind everyone that this was a group decision. And let's not forget rule number seven of the Seven Deadly Sins: Make sure to work as a team every once in a while."

"Since Lance and his friends are staying in the guest room, we're a little pressed for space," Elizabeth said, spreading apologetic looks.

Meliodas upped the ante with a wicked grin. "Kay, so who's gonna sleep outside?"

Diane and King raised their hands in the same instance; both of them were not only used to spending the nights outside, but genuinely preferred it to the cramped confinements humans liked to trap themselves in. And even though the two hundred years King had been restricted by prison walls lay behind him, the shudder of remembrance overcame him every now and then in windowless rooms.

"Great, then it's the floor for me, I guess," Ban complained with a groan. "I hope ya at least have some pillows lying around here, Captain."

"Why dontcha ask King if he lends you his Sacred Treasure?"

King huffed. "Not in your wildest dreams."

With Gowther allowed to spend the night at his previous favorite place, the attic, and Merlin teleporting herself and Escanor back to Liones' capital for the time being – with the promise to return the next morning – the lack space was solved quickly. And while Ban almost threw an overplayed tantrum at the prospect of being forced to sleep in the main bar room, the fact that this would allow him unlimited access to Meliodas' booze stockings made him quite lenient.

After wishing a wholesome night to Meliodas and Elizabeth, King followed Diane outside, where the last sunbeams of the day had turned into a faint memory. Yet Liones resisted the night with its many torches and watchfires, a jar of glass filled with countless fireflies. Aside from a handful of crickets, the night was silent, no gusts brushed through the chestnut trees. Diane placed her steps more carelessly than usual, trudging fast in an effort to leave the light bleeding out of the Boar Hat's windows behind. And still she said no word, she hardly even noticed King's attempt to follow her. He wished they hadn't come here in the first place.

He caught up to her under the branches of a chestnut tree teeming with youth. "I know you're upset because of the things I said against helping them out, and I'm sorry about it." He couldn't be sure his words had been the reason for Diane's hesitance to vote, but he hoped his apology would at the very least compel her to open up a little.

"It's not that," Diane said after pausing for a moment and turned around to face him at last. "Not really…"

Glad to have her looking at him, King continued. "I've disappointed the other Fairies too often in the past, and I hoped I would never have to do that again. Now, I'm no longer sure what to do tomorrow. If you want to go, I'll–"

"You're not making things easier for me, you know?" Diane cut him off. The uncertainty had returned to her eyes. "I know you have responsibilities, I have them too. I've neglected my own Clan just as much, if not more so. And I still do it. I rather spend my days in the Fairy King's Forest than leading my people because you have always meant more to me than they do. Too often I choose the easy way out when I should be helping them better themselves. Because I used to hate what they stand for and the things they've done… including the Colossai."

For a moment, all King could do was stare at the fine lines around her mouth as they twisted in resentment.

As he failed to come up with any response at all, Diane continued with her gaze locked to some place next to him. "The Colossai are a creation of past Giant chiefs, a forbidden manipulation of life to further enlarge their power and to win honor in battle – the one goal they all strive towards. They used them to destroy human villages and even to fight other Giants. Any Giant who dared to rebel against the chiefs disappeared, and the number of Colossai grew and so did the power of the chiefs. They would have continued to bring harm if the Colossai hadn't been sealed away by someone unknown. That was before Drole united the Giants as one clan. He made sure no one attempted to create another Colossai, so that this bloodshed wouldn't continue. But now, they're on the loose again."

Diane shot a glance at King to catch his reaction, only to avert her eyes when she was faced with the horror that he was certain to display on his face.

He hadn't known any of this.

King's knowledge about the Colossai had extended little further than a few whispered tales about fear and aimless destruction that had surfaced every once in a while in the Fairy Realm. None of them had cited the Giant Clan as responsible for the birth of these monstrosities. But still…

"Diane, please listen to me, this has nothing to do with you!" King said with unnecessary intensity, startling Diane. "Those were other Giants, thousands of years ago. You didn't partake in any of their or their Colossai's actions. There's no way for you to change what they did. Please, don't blame yourself for it."

To see her punish herself like this made King's heart twist in agony, hot and burning and nearly impossible for him to fight. He would tell Diane anything comforting his desperate mind could come up with to erase the guilt-ridden expression from her face.

"I didn't partake in any of it?" Diane asked, her voice cold from her self-inflicted burden. "The golems I form are only one step away from developing sentience. They can kill humans with the same ease they take down Red Demons. What difference is there be between them and the Colossai?"

For once, King knew what to do, the thought came to him with unusual clarity. He stepped forward and raised one hand to touch her face. As she then looked at him with those violet-colored eyes he loved more than everything else in this world, her gaze was clouded with tears at the cusp of breaking free.

"You," he answered, "you would be the difference. Because you don't seek power or control, and you only use the golems to protect yourself or others. You could never create something evil or destructive. I know you couldn't. And if you ask yourself deep down, you know it too."

The smile that slowly, hesitantly even, brightened Diane's face was like the sun breaking through the clouds after a rainy day.

"Thank you, King," she said before swinging her arms around him. He leaned closer, and her soft strands tickled his cheek as she nestled her head on his shoulder.

After relishing the touch of the other for a few moments, Diane pulled away just far enough so that she was able to thoroughly look at King. "What do you want to do about tomorrow?" she asked.

The last thing he wanted was for Diane to be reminded of her clan's involvement with the Colossai, but helping to seal them away again might enable her to forgive herself for the crimes that were not her own. And Diane would always want to protect a group of troubled children. No matter the circumstances.

"If you want to, we'll go to Camlann with the others," he said, and was gifted by another smile and a more confident nod.

Elaine would undoubtedly be displeased with his decision to burden her with the Fairy King's Forest for a longer stretch of time than agreed upon, but for Diane, King was willing to put up with the fury of his sister.

He could already imagine the hell on earth she would give him.


	9. The Kingdom of Camlann

– Eight years before The Fall –

Diane always enjoyed her visits to the Boar Hat, she cherished the chance to talk to Elizabeth and the Captain after the long months of separation, and even the building itself had become nostalgic to her. While it was not quite the same as the original Boar Hat in terms of design, the atmosphere had transferred into this new house Elizabeth and the Captain called home. A feeling of belonging, of comradery clung to the wooden furniture and to the ochre clay walls. Even the smell reminded of the days when the Seven Deadly Sins had sat together at the rounded table of a different tavern so many years ago.

But all these thoughts were shoved aside, silenced by the adoration towards the newborn Diane cradled in her arms. Motherly pride swelled in her chest as the girl clenched her tiny hands in light sleep, a feeling Diane had never grown out of, even though she had experienced these emotions with her first two children as well. But looking at Aurora peacefully stir in her sleep, her soft facial features so reminiscent of her father's, evoked a different, maybe even more powerful affection in Diane's heart. Aurora, named after the spectacular morning sun that had bathed the Fairy King's Forest in orange hues when she had opened her amber eyes for the first time.

Diane had been almost disappointed by how little her two older daughters resembled Harlequin, and Ivy's brashness was a constant source of trouble. Despite her best efforts to fit in with the Fairy folk, Ivy showed so many of the traits Diane had spent the past years weeding out of her clan's mindset; the stubbornness, the tendency to resort conflict with violence…

Aurora was different, she would one day become a beautiful Fairy, that much Diane was certain of.

The soft, bell-like sound of a chuckle directed Diane's focus away from her daughter to instead face Elizabeth's gleaming smile. "You're doing it all the time, you know?" Elizabeth said. "Looking at her, I mean."

Diane sighed in defeat. "I can't help it. Hearing her breathe alone always feels like the most precious gift life could've given to me. There's nothing as powerful as when your child looks at you, smiles at you, reaches out for you because they recognize you. They know they are safe as long as they are with you. And you swear to yourself you'll always be there for them, and you will always protect them no matter –" Diane forced herself to stop.

Who was she to talk about those things, to Elizabeth of all people, as carelessly as she had? When Diane managed to look at her best friend, Elizabeth's smile had cracked like a mirror on the floor. The pained expression only lasted for a moment, before she recovered from the loss of her façade, a little too hasty, a little too desperate.

"I'm so happy for you and King." The distress had almost fled her voice, but still, it was there without a doubt.

The topic hung in the empty space between them, a line Diane had dared to cross, and neither of them knew how to continue. Diane could not bring herself to mumble as little as a 'thanks' and avoided eye contact as best she could without plain rudeness. Why had she brought that matter up in the first place?

A wave of blond hair saved Diane from the pitiful silence by tucking at Elizabeth's sleeve. "Mommy, look, I've drawn this for you," Katrina said and proudly presented an indefinable kaleidoscope of bright colors that the young girl had splattered onto a piece of paper. Her fingers left green and yellow marks on the fine silk of Elizabeth's sleeve, and Katrina's own dress had suffered from her artistic enthusiasm as well.

Elizabeth examined the painting before shoving away a strand of hair that had fallen into her daughter's face. "I see, this is daddy, right?" She asked and earned a gleaming nod from Katrina.

How Elizabeth was able to identify the yellow blob as Meliodas, Diane had no idea, but she was glad for the distraction regardless.

"Okay, then this must be me," Elizabeth guessed. And with success it seemed, much to Katrina's delight. "But it is missing yourself! Don't you want to be part of the picture too? Why don't you finish this painting, and then we will hang it up on the drawing board, okay sunshine? I'm sure daddy would like to see it too when he comes back."

Katrina stared at her mother with wide eyes before nodding with all the enthusiasm of a four-year-old who had been assigned a task for grownups and hopped back to her current workspace; in this case the tiled floor, littered with countless tubs filled with every color imaginable. Deep burgundy, bright lime, and even variants of indigo were scattered around, a birthday present from Katrina's aunt Margaret that had to have cost a fortune. Katrina lunged for her favorite scruffy brush and settled herself opposite from Cynthia, who was filling her parchment with delicate, curved lines.

Diane sneaked a peek at Elizabeth, who was looking at her daughter with the same expression of unconditional love Diane knew to have displayed herself a few moments ago. When Elizabeth realized she had been stared at for a while, she averted her eyes before regaining focus.

"It seems I am just as helpless as you are," she said, making both of them laugh a little.

"So," Elizabeth continued, "do you think we should call them for tea already? Where has Ivy run off to, anyway? I thought she was very excited about drawing."

"She's outside, playing catch with Lance," Diane said. The parchment Ivy had abandoned out of boredom after five minutes lay next to Cynthia, a sight that tempted Diane to release a tired sigh. "I just hope she doesn't hit his head with a ball again, that would be the third time this month."

Elizabeth chuckled. "To be fair, Lance has a tendency to drive her mad. And that one time doesn't really count, since –"

Whatever point Elizabeth had wanted to make was silenced by a violent outcry from the center of the room.

"GIVE IT BACK!" Katrina screamed at Cynthia, her face red with anger, her voice deeper than it had been before. Her firsts trembled at her side, but whatever it was Katrina demanded to be handed over, Cynthia did not oblige. With what was either defiance or misplaced ignorance, Cynthia shook her head. Aurora whimpered in Diane's arms. The air cracked with energy, the hairs on Diane's arms stood up, and the birds' chirping from outside died down.

Diane recognized the nexus of darkness in Katrina's eyes a second before it erupted but not early enough to prevent the inevitable. She had barely jumped out of her seat when a tidal wave of dark magic spread from Katrina, born out of anger and something far more sinister, demonic even. Instead of oxygen, the room filled with magic that pressured the lung and made it impossible to breathe. The sheer force knocked Diane off balance like a physical obstacle, and she squinted her eyes in reflex.

As quickly as it had surged, the magic dispelled just as Diane reached her daughter. Cynthia lay curled on the floor, trembling with shock or agony, and the tears streamed down her face. The tube of purple paint she had been clutching spilled its content, a growing pool of lavender-colored blood. Diane shifted Aurora to her left arm to inspect Cynthia for injuries, for a cut disfiguring the soft skin of her arms, for a bloody wound hidden behind her dark hair, for cracks in her ribcage Diane tried to palpate with trembling fingers. She begged to every might in this universe to let her daughter be unharmed, her darkest fears magnified by the sound of Aurora sobbing in sync with her sister. When she was unable to find any external effect of the darkness on Cynthia, Diane pulled her into a tight embrace and petted her back in soothing motions. But she could hardly fight the tears of relief swimming in her own eyes.

The mark of black demon magic on Cynthia's right palm, covered by the paint dripping from her fingers, escaped her search.

After Cynthia's cries were reduced to silent shaking, Diane straightened from her kneeling position to meet Katrina's stare. She looked straight through her, without recognition. Elizabeth had laid an arm around her daughter, her expression almost as empty, and Diane could not help the accusing glares she sent her. Anger swelled to burn the relief. Elizabeth had allowed this to happen, she hadn't stepped in to counter and nullify Katrina's powers with her own. She was as responsible for Cynthia's pain as Katrina was.

Nothing mattered more to Diane than the safety of her children, those fragile bundles of life that were the most important to her, for which she would die in a heartbeat. And Elizabeth hadn't even tried to save them from the wrath of her daughter.

She brushed Katrina's hair with her hand. Silent.

When the last hope of receiving an explanation, an apology, a reassurance, _anything _from Elizabeth died, Diane picked up Cynthia with her free arm and stormed out the door without another word.

* * *

The next morning arrived with the annoyance of arching muscles and a tensed-up neck that creaked with every movement. No wonder, considering the position Lance had fallen asleep in.

When Katrina and Gaius had returned to the guest room after catching a bit of fresh air – Lance had been too fed up with the day to ask what captivating conversations they had made all by themselves – they had agreed to let Katrina sleep in the single bed. Ivy preferred the floor anyway, and Lance usually had no problem finding sleep in any position, regardless of the comfort it provided. But after spending the night in a sitting position lend against a dresser, he was willing to reassess that ability of his. The cursed knobs of the lowest drawers had left such deep imprints in his side he worried they might be permanent.

Hoping his advanced healing would soon chase away the pain in his body, Lance left the guest room and snuck downstairs.

Since he had been awake first for once – Gaius obviously did not count; that guy _never_ slept, his pale face was stuck between equally pale pages day and night – Lance had enough spare time to fetch his and Ivy's weapons before someone would miss him. Regardless of whether their parents had decided to help them, they would need their weapons sooner rather than later.

In the tavern room downstairs, Lance was greeted by the sight of his father slacked at one of the tables, a half-emptied mug of alcohol next to his head. Aberdeen ale, from the sickly-sweet smell that hung over Ban's head. It seemed as though some things would never change, and Lance's father being a hopeless admirer of stimulating liquids was one of them. Torn between appalled and nostalgic, Lance crept across the room and through the door.

Outside, the air was filled with a richness that could only be tasted during the early hours of a muggy day, before the heat became unbearable and every creature with sense fled into the cool of shadows. Lance took a second to treat his face to the warmth of the sun, hoping to singe some of his tiredness. The earth shook under the constant beat of Giant steps, a telltale sign that Diane had favored a walk over another hour of sleep much like Lance had. But since she wasn't headed in the same direction, he paid her no mind.

The undergrowth where Ivy and Lance had hidden their weapons was easy enough to find, but unfortunately, Lance had overlooked a crucial detail that was already making his back scream with phantom agony.

Ivy's, or more precisely her mother's, Sacred Treasure was impossible to wield by others by design, and Lance fell victim to that enchantment as much as anyone who planned to steal the war hammer. Sacred Treasures needed to accept their master before the chosen individual was able to control them and benefit from their ability to channel their owner's magic, but the details were a little muddled. Aura for example had the potential to wield her father's Sacred Treasure, Chastifol, but she had never managed more than a few spins with it. Even when disregarding that problem, Gideon was designed for a Giant and weighed about a ton even in its shrunken form – impossible to drag all the way to the Boar Hat from a logistic standpoint alone.

Increasingly frustrated, Lance reequipped his own weapons to his back and let the options run through his head. Giving up seemed the least complicated plan of action, after all, Ivy could just as well fetch her stuff on her own. But surrender was also the least rewarding alternative, and Lance preferred to be spared a snarky remark from Ivy against his weak physique.

The solution hit him unexpectedly, as his brain jumped back to a detail in his surroundings he had deemed irrelevant. He might not be able to lift Gideon, but he knew someone who could. Carefully, Lance tipped the metal head of the war hammer with one foot, before smacking the same foot against the immovable object with all the force he could bring forth.

"ARGH! DAMN IT!"

The pain signals of his broken toes made the crack in his neck feel like a gentle breeze by comparison, and he rocked back and forth, struggling to maintain balance. He might have overplayed his act a little, but his performance was at the very least rewarded with the sound of heavy steps closing in on him with increased urgency. When Diane came into view, Lance was still hopping up and down on his unbroken foot and grinned with inner contentment – for as long as he didn't think too much about the self-inflicted damage that would take at least an hour to properly heal.

"Are you hurt?" Diane asked in utter panic and bend down to better inspect Lance. She looked as though she expected him to drop dead any second, her concerned face a bit too close for comfort.

"It's alright, I think," Lance answered between gritted teeth. "Just wanted to pick up Ivy's weapon for her, but it must've slipped to fall right on my foot. This thing's so much heavier than it looks. Would you mind helping me out with this?"

"Sure," Diane said and picked Gideon from the ground with ease.

Significantly slowed by Lance's limping, they crawled back to the Boar Hat. Lance stumbled a few times on purpose, which compelled Diane to drop to her knees next to him and insist for him to take a break. And if Lance hadn't denied her offer with sharp vehemence, she would have carried him the rest of the way as well. Even without knowing who he was, she acted like the overprotective aunt Lance remembered her to be.

"Not to be rude or anything, but have you already decided what to do with us?" Lance asked after a while. The silence had become awkward. "Diane, wasn't it?" he added unnecessarily.

"Right, and you were Just-Lance," Diane said with a small chuckle. "King and I want to help you against the Colossai, and the vote went in your favor, too. Can't be sure about Merlin and Escanor, but the rest of us are on board."

Lance allowed himself a sigh of relief. The support of the Sins would make the next steps a lot easier for his ragtag group of time travelers, and since he got along well with all the Sins, he looked forward to their company. Or at least he used to get along with them, back when they _remembered_ him.

Diane had used their dragged-out walk to take a closer look at Ivy's hammer, and the longer she kept turning the miniature of her own Sacred Treasure in her palm, the more nervous Lance became. If Diane would judge the similarities too jarring, Lance would have a lot more trouble than getting that cursed weapon from point A to B. And the constant throbbing in his toes disabled his thinking, so he couldn't construct a half-baked lie to feed Diane either.

"It's pretty," Diane finally said, and Lance's tension eased. "Where did Ivy get it from?"

"She inherited it from her mother." When lying, it was better to use as much of the truth as possible. Wasn't that something Ivy liked to tell him?

Diane's expression darkened. "You mean Ivy lost her mother."

"Yeah. Not too long ago, actually. She never talks about it, not even with me."

Lance realized a little too late how easily his voice revealed his hurt towards Ivy's secrecy. He understood her desire to keep the precise events of The Fall locked and starved in the back of her mind, at least he told himself he did, but her behavior led him to question whether she trusted him enough to share these memories. All he knew about the fate of Aura and the others stemmed from Ivy's vague statements, and he had never called her into question since the beginning of their journey. So why did Ivy refuse to return the favor?

Lance made an effort to swallow the bitterness; these thoughts would lead him nowhere anyway.

But Diane surprised him with what she said next. "I imagine you two are pretty close, and you trust her, don't you?" Stunned by how close Diane's assessment hit home, Lance nodded.

"How did you figure that out?" he asked.

"I have eyes, you know? It was obvious when you went out to comfort her yesterday. Your face then reminded me of King actually. He always had that same concerned expression for me, even when I was too blind to see it." Diane caught herself reminiscing, and shook her head to regain focus, making her pigtails dance around her face "I'm sorry I went on rambling, it's nothing you have to concern yourself with. Anyway, you have to trust in Ivy to open up about what happened once she's had enough time to process it herself. Give her some time, and I can guarantee you'll be rewarded for your patience."

"Thanks," Lance said, "I'll try to keep that in mind."

By the time Lance and Diane returned to the Boar Hat, almost everyone had gathered around a table at the inn room, including Merlin and Escanor, who seemed to have decided to join them as well.

Ivy was giving Lance a questioning look when he entered, but he dispelled her worries with a thumbs-up and sat down on the unoccupied stool next to her. Emptied bowls stood scattered on the tabletop, save for the massive dish filled with the remains of apple porridge Ivy shoved towards him. Everyone else had finished eating, and Lance realized Ivy had saved the last portion just for him; it wasn't like her to leave a dish unfinished.

A quick overview of the room revealed that, other than Gaius, no one was missing. Even Errin had returned from whatever hole she had dug for herself and leaned against the wall with the textbook example of a sour expression on her face.

When Gaius emerged from the stairs, his nose buried in some notebook he was carrying around wherever he went, Meliodas began to brief the group on the result of yesterday evening's vote.

"Okay kids, we've agreed to help ya with the Colossai problem of yours. And since all of us are present, it seems no one decided to bail out." Meliodas accompanied his last words with a side-glance at King, who was floating next to the window, arms crossed and visibly distressed.

Lance wondered what that was all about, but Meliodas continued before he could think of any solid explanations. "So, here are the rules: First up, no one of you'll engage in combat if it can be avoided." Ivy chocked out a complaining sound, and Katrina opened her mouth in protest, but Meliodas ignored them. "Second rule: on this whole trip, word from any of us will be your law. Meaning that you'll stay back when we tell ya to, and you'll run for your lives when we tell ya to. That clear? 'Cause otherwise we'll cancel this operation right here and now."

The sounds of agreement came reluctantly at best. Errin, meanwhile, stayed dead-silent and looked as though she could imagine nothing more tempting than strangle someone.

"Great, now Merlin, will you take over from here?"

"Already ahead of you, Captain." With the wave of a hand, Merlin conjured a translucent map of northern Britannia into the air above the table and pointed at an area to the far north. "This is where the seal was last located before it allegedly broke. While it would be easiest to reconstruct the very same sealing spell, we have to first make sure that there aren't any free-roaming Colossai left in Camlann. I suggest we split up to maximize our range of operation."

Lance felt obligated to interrupt with a question that had been nagging him for quite some time. "But first we have to get to Camlann, right? This will take up at least two days of travel. Much more when we take the difficult terrain into consideration."

"Too bad our last set of wheels turned out to be an inflated, green lie," Ban grumbled.

Merlin shooed the hovering map away with a flick of her wrist. "This won't be a problem at all. My magic potential should be high enough to teleport all of us to where we need to be."

Magic Potential was by no means Lance's field of expertise, but as far as he recalled, every spell a person with a knack for magic casted was linked to a cost level that determined how much of the user's magic energy was consumed. Especially highly difficult spells or those with a longer duration could only be performed by those with enough magic energy to sustain the loss. After using his magical ability for an overly long stretch of time, he experienced similar effects in the form of exhaustion and dizziness, but to be sure about the workings, Lance would have to ask Gaius. He wondered if Gaius was able to teleport such a large group of people. He had only ever seen him teleport himself around, but this ability would surely be useful for their group.

"I suggest then that we leave as soon as possible," Gowther said. "To best help the inhabitants of Camlann, there is no time to be wasted."

"Agreed," Merlin said, and before anyone had the chance to complain, she snapped her fingers. Bright light expanded to swallow the room, not unlike the Time Crystal's magic in appearance, and Lance was forced to shut his eyes.

When he opened them, the Boar Hat had vanished, replaced by a vast landscape of grass-covered hillsides and rocky cliffs spiraling into the air, dark and intimidating. To his left-hand side, an arrangement of even taller mountains blocked the morning sun, bathing the valley into which he had been teleported in shadows. The summits reached so high that they were covered in permanent snow, in spite of the summer warmth that had been so fervent back in Liones. Lance shivered against the howling wind that crept through his tunic. He had never been to mountain ranges this steep before, and he despised the way the surrounding cliffsides bent into the valley; they seemed to threaten to bury him under tons of black rock at any second.

"Damn it, Merlin, a little heads-up would've been nice," Ban complained to Lance's right. "Ya didn't even give us time to pack some stuff."

"In the worst case, Merlin can surely teleport us back for a while, right?" Elizabeth said, still a little thrown off balance by the sudden change in space herself.

But Merlin looked awfully pale, regardless of how carefully she tried to hide the toll the spell had taken on her. Moving a room full of people from one location to another in a matter of seconds had to require more magic than Lance had thought.

Whether out of a sense of vulnerability or the adjustment to the side effects of the teleportation spell, Merlin straightened and fell seamlessly back into her old habits. "The seal should be located a little further ahead," she said, and pointed to a narrow passageway embedded into the cliffside. "But it might be better to evaluate the surrounding area first. Just so that we won't run into any unfavorable surprises later."

"Copied," Meliodas said, but his cheerfulness sounded a tad forced. "Then how 'bout you stay here with Elizabeth, Merlin? And best you look out for the kids as well. King, Diane, you two go north, Ban and Gowther head out that way. And I'm gonna explore the other direction with Escanor."

Meliodas' orders were met with nods from the Sins, with the exception of Gowther, who raised his voice to be heard over the loud squalls with which the wind hurried through the valley. "It might be better to split Lance's group as well. A group too large is more likely to attract attention, whether from Colossai or other unknown forces. And they know this area better than we do."

The last point didn't exactly hold true, and Lance readied himself to pass out an excuse for why he had no idea where they were and even less of an idea of what might await them beyond this valley. But his lack of local knowledge turned out to be far from his most pressing worry.

"Alright then. Errin, you go with King and Diane. Lance with Ban and Gowther, and Ivy's gonna go with me. Good hunt, everyone!" With these words, Meliodas headed into the direction he had assigned himself to, and Escanor hurried to trip behind.

Ivy shot Lance a panicked look but did not know any better than to follow them, albeit with obvious reluctance. Lance wasn't comfortable with splitting up either, but he had to admit it made sense from a strategic standpoint. As did the way Meliodas had assigned them to the preexisting teams.

Ivy, Errin, and Lance showcased more traits of actual fighters, down to the fact that they were the ones carrying weapons, unlike Gaius and Katrina. And while Gaius could hold his own against any opponent just as well as they could with his magic talents, judging from looks alone he appeared rather frail in his oversized coat.

"Come on kid, let's get going," Ban interrupted Lance's thoughts and gave him a push to the back to start moving. Lance made a face. Even without Ban knowing him to be his son, he would never get rid of the nasty nickname 'kid'.

With an exasperated sigh, Lance trudged forward, trying his best to conceal how nerve-racking it was to be paired with his father. And that was just the beginning of the day. He wasn't keen on imagining how much more fun they were about to have once actual Colossai would show up.

* * *

Errin was more than grateful for the chance to bring space between herself and the whole bunch, even if the much-needed breather would only last for a little while. She was tired of all the antagonism thrown her way, from Lance, from Ivy – from all of them. Maybe she was being unfair, Lance had tried his best to patch up their story with details Errin would have never thought to bring up, and they had by some miracle managed to convince the Sins to help without blowing their cover. But his lies were no doubt going to bite him later on.

The fact they were supposed to know their ways around Camlann, for example.

Errin had never visited the small northern kingdom, all her knowledge stemmed from texts and second-hand stories, and she had to admit she hadn't paid close attention whenever her fellow Holy Knight Eugenius had talked about his homeland with the dreamy voice he had been mocked for by his comrades. She doubted the rest of her unwanted batch had more firsthand knowledge to show for. And while Gaius could cover his heritage with a slew of collected book quotes, Errin distrusted her ability to manage the same.

While maneuvering through piles of black talus in an attempt to stick close to Diane and the Fairy King, she cursed Meliodas' decision to pair her with these two in particular. On surface level, they were more tolerable than the outward personalities of Ban or Meliodas, but they were a constant reminder of Mordred's deeds. More so than any other Sins. Not because Errin knew them better, or even because Mordred allegedly killed them with his own hands – according to Ivy's story, a story without evidence.

No, what made Errin's head throb was the thought of their children. Ivy's three younger siblings, the oldest of them about the same age as Katrina. Mordred could have never killed them himself, but tragedies occur in times of war, every family had such stories to tell, and during the destruction of Liones at the hands of the Colossai, Ivy's siblings had simply been another casualty. Errin had no reason to deny their deaths, but she refused to hear they might have been part of Mordred's plan. He had overtaken Liones because a king had any right to conquer those nations too weak to withstand. King Arthur had done the same.

The death of Ivy's siblings had been nothing but an unfortunate accident.

Not Mordred's fault. Never.

Errin closed the door to these dark thoughts and watched King float farther ahead to scout the area.

They had long left the valley and were following a narrow pathway curling between high rising rock formations to either side. Moss covered the walls of the canyon, a thick, green tapestry dripping with dew. Drops splashed into the shallow puddles running alongside the walls, the sound too loud in Errin's ears. The canyon made for the ideal site for an ambush, as every turn could conceal a knight or even a Colossai.

After having disappeared behind the upcoming corner for a handful of seconds, King returned, his expression grimmer than before. "There was a fight ahead recently. Part of the canyon has filled up with rocks."

"Any survivors?" Diane sounded equally worried, if not more so.

King shook his head and gave Errin a compassionate look. And though his sympathy was wasted on her because of the simple fact that she didn't know a single soul in Camlann, she appreciated the effort.

The scenery around the canyon bend matched what King had described. Bodies and weapons were scattered all around, half of them crushed under debris. None of the humans carried the silver ram of Camlann; they had been civilians rather than soldiers. Their arsenal told the same story, as it ranged from household knives and wooden bats to the most makeshift spears imaginable. Not a single sword stuck out of the rubble. Further ahead, the path was blocked by rocks, placed there to prevent an unknown force from advancing. But the hastily crafted barrier had collapsed in on itself, and the path beyond was exposed to view once more. King landed on top of the rubble and let his gaze wander further ahead. As Errin followed his example and closed in on the barrier, she caught sight of a small village.

Or more precisely, the remnants of one.

Whatever the farmers had tried to defend against, it had broken through and had enacted its wrath onto the remaining villagers. Debris from houses, bricks and pieces of thatched roofs alike, covered the churned-up ground, the bodies piled in between. Errin retched from the smoke in the air, born from a fireplace that continued its business in spite of the crumbled walls around it. Driven by trancelike shock more than anything else, she climbed through the opening cut into the barrier, towards the destruction.

A quick look on a detailed map showed that Camlann was strewn with dislocated villages like this one, many of them cut off from the outside world so entirely that help had no chance to arrive in time. This village had succumbed to that exact fate.

"Have you been to this village before?" Diane asked. Her voice echoed strangely from the rock formations bordering the village, that gave the impression they were standing at the bottom of a deep cauldron.

Errin shook her head.

"There's some sort of magical presence in this place," King said. Silent glances exchanged between him and Diane, a language Errin did not share. Their behavior was strangely reminiscent of the closeness between Lance and Ivy, a familiarity born out of years spend in company of the other. In what felt like a lifetime ago, Errin had known the same bond.

King moved closer to Diane, and his wings quivered with tenseness. His head spun to where the cauldron widened into a larger valley, a heartbeat before the earth started to shake under the steady hammering of footsteps. Massive footsteps carrying a weight heavier than any Giant.

The debris beneath Errin's feet shook in sync with the rhythmic pounding that grew in intensity, drew closer and closer, and gravity was put on hold each time a massive foot connected with the earth. Beat, pause, beat.

Errin braced herself and fastened the grip around her unsheathed sword. And still the steps became louder and louder until they echoed from the canyon walls in cacophony. Pound, pause, pound.

Her breathing became one with the footsteps. Breathe in, pause, breathe out.

Then the Colossai showed itself from beyond the village's borders, its featureless head turned their way, ready to hunt down its next prey. The creature's shadow swallowed the insides of the rock cauldron, and Errin dug her heels into the ground to fight the tremor in her calf. The metal of her gloves rattled against the cross-guard of her sword.

She risked a look at her companions and was shocked to see Diane's blank gaze. Paralyzed with what had to be fear, he had loosened the grip around her own weapon at the sight of the Colossai. King positioned himself in front of her and called forth his Sacred Treasure, a massive spear of gold and magic.

"Don't move," he ordered Errin, before floating closer to the stone creature.

So far, the Colossai had shown no signs of hostility, but faced with a fifty feet tall monstrosity, Errin refused to trust the apparent peace. King had crossed more than half the distance to the Colossai when Errin was shaken by the deafening sound of metal connecting with stone, as Gideon slipped out of Diane's lose grasp.

The stillness had disappeared, the battle begun.

A forgotten bloodlust awoke within the Colossai, and it swung its arm with surprising precision at the closest target in sight. The attack would have knocked King straight out of the air if he hadn't blocked the strike with Chastifol's spear form a mere second before impact. The Colossai's arm came crashing down to the earth instead, and Errin had to roll out of the way of flying rubble. Diane came to her senses just before the Colossai landed another hit against King's Spirit Spear and proceeded to form an earth barrier in front of Errin, cutting her off from the fight.

The next blow, directed at the rock formation close by, send a barrage of man-sized boulders tumbling down on King, narrowly redirected in time by Diane. They smashed into the Colossai, but the physical attack left its stone torso unscathed; the rubble exploded in a cloud of dust.

Despite Diane's counterattack, the Colossai focused all its efforts on King, and swung its arms left and right in hopes of catching the Fairy off guard. As he realized he had been picked the main target, King retreated a couple feet to give Diane a better opening to strike.

"«Heavy Metal»!" In accordance to her command, Diane's body turned metallic. She dashed forward and dealt an elbow hit against the Colossai's midsection.

The brute force of impact sent the creature stumbling backwards, but it still showed no sign of damage or a desire to slow down and assess the situation. In disregard of its own safety, the Colossai pushed past Diane to attack King once more. And while King was prepared for the foreseeable arm swing, the simultaneous earth attack hit him unguarded. Earth and rock and gravel tore itself from the canyon wall, called into action by an unspoken command. Shocked to see the Colossai use the same earth manipulation as the Giant Clan did, Errin could do little more than watch as King was stricken down by the first rock heading his way, before he duplicated his Sacred Treasure. While one form was keeping the Colossai at bay with a crossfire of flying swords, the other had turned into the second guardian form to deflect the upcoming rocks, and King swayed in between, struggling to stay afloat.

Worry for King had overtaken any other emotion on Diane's grim face, and she raised a free hand towards the Colossai and clenched it into a fist.

The world itself seemed to stop moving. The wave of flying rocks had ceased in the same instance that the creature calling them forth went still, frozen in Diane's grip on the Colossai's earth stature. Keeping the Colossai in place was visibly draining Diane's energy; her outstretched arm trembled as she fought against the creature's will to break free.

And just as King tried to use the break in the Colossai's attack pattern to his advantage, it _changed_ its surface structure. Where there had been rock and stone mere moments before, the Colossai was shining with metal, an armor produced out of thin air.

Diane's control over the Colossai snapped in an instant. The entire canyon was shaking under the Colossai's rage and killing intent. It roared, an ugly breed between an earthquake and a clap of thunder, the rocks crumbled, and chunks crashed upon the village. Errin dove out of the cover of Diane's barrier to evade the boulder threatening to crush her. The next one miraculously missed her by less than an inch.

Now that she stood out in the open, the Colossai took notice of her for the first time and slammed its fist to the ground with the force of a mountain. The earth cracked, a gaping crevice spread towards her, ready to swallow her. She stood her ground and concentrated her entire being on the Colossai. Running was pointless, her tiny sword was useless, but her magical ability might still turn the tides. «Override» cut the Colossai's ties to its magic and stopped the earth manipulation to render the scene silent once more, save for the wailing sounds radiating from the depowered Colossai.

King stepped in before Errin could lose concentration. "Forth configuration: «Sunflower»!"

Behind him, a gigantic sunflower grew higher and higher into the air above the canyon walls, its stem bursting with thorns larger than Errin, making even the Colossai appear small by comparison. As the flower opened its petals, it emitted a massive beacon of concentrated energy that swallowed the Colossai whole.

The magical attack managed what no physical attack had come close to, as the ray of the sunflower disintegrated the enemy in its entirety, to the point where no trace remained of it, once the blinding light had ceased.

Errin drew in a shaky breath. The battle was won.

* * *

Being ordered to stay behind and wait in close proximity to the ravine housing the seal, offered Gaius the ideal opportunity to think through a few critical points in demand of assessment. Mainly, how Merlin had bent space to allow not merely herself, but twelve additional people to travel the distance between Liones and Camlann in less than a second.

Teleportation as an individual spell was easy enough to form out of the base incantation _sumeti _and the addition of the desired endpoint of the journey – though it was a cost-heavy spell to begin with. Based on empirical studies and his own experience, Gaius could think of only two ways to extend the effect of magic spells onto others.

The first one required the spellcaster to essentially cast a separate spell for every target, and end the incantation with oneself and thus the self-describing word _mashi_. However, compiling a string of words with thirteen variables was not only time-consuming, but also easy to fumble and fail with. The other, and far more pleasant path for a given magic wielder to take, was to expand the area of effect the base teleportation spell operated under. This could be achieved through _sumeti_ followed by _kiatohara_ and a clarification of the range. Still a complicated and concerningly high-energy spell, but manageable with enough training.

Gaius could not wait to try out this discovery for himself, but this would have to wait for a while. He planned to use as little magic as feasible for as long as he faced the possibility for Merlin to become aware of the fact that he was trained in magical arts far beyond the level of a commoner. After all, Errin had made convincing arguments about the high likelihood of getting caught in their web of lies, and Gaius was not going to be the one to add any suspicions against them. Not that he dared to believe Merlin could be fooled at all.

Gaius looked up from his book, into which he had noted his newfound knowledge on teleportation magic, and started when he found Merlin inspecting him with open curiosity. The intensity of her gaze made him feel what could poignantly be described as 'uneasy', and he directed his eyes to the mundane view of his feet before shoving his book into the depths of his pockets.

But his actions failed to impede the interrogation.

"And you were born in this kingdom of Camlann as well?" Merlin asked, and Gaius dared to give a deceptive nod. "Then I believe you might know a few additional things about the seal containing the Colossai."

He assessed whether or not it was wise to follow the invitation. Tight-lipped behavior and a reluctance to pass helpful information could raise as much suspicion as poorly aligning details in their made-up story.

Gaius decided to rather risk the latter outcome. "The seal was forged around three thousand years ago, before the outbreak of the Holy War. It is unclear by whom the Colossai were cut off from the mortal plain, but it is a common belief that it was the works of the Demon Clan to weaken their foes," he recited from memory.

He would have continued without much effort, but Merlin's amused smile broke his concentration for a second too long.

"And where have you gathered information this historic?"

Of course, Gaius was supposed to play the role of an uneducated, talentless child, in desperate need of saving from adults. His lengthy monologue had done nothing to contribute to this role. "I… read," he answered dully.

"Well, I advise you continue reading in order to avoid a stale mind. The ability to read is still not as common among humans as it should be, you can be grateful to call yourself an exception. Did your parents teach you how to read?"

Gaius observed the signs of use etched into his shoes. "I cannot seem to remember them."

"I see… then who did teach you?"

"I believe I taught myself. The many books that surrounded me intrigued me, and I was eager to understand their secrets."

Merlin narrowed her eyes but thankfully refrained from pursuing the matter further. "It appears you have successfully memorized the scarce facts about the history of the Colossai. However, I was more interested in first-hand information on the seal and its workings. Has it changed considerately before it broke? And when exactly was the destruction of the seal discovered? Any information could be useful."

Gaius hunted through his mind for some harmless information he could toss Merlin without grave consequences but was saved from further questioning by Elizabeth. "Give him some space, Merlin. He already looks so distraught by your constant curiosity. The past days must have been very stressing for him and his friends."

"If you say so…" With visible reluctance, Merlin let the topic go.

For the first time since their arrival, Gaius took a moment to observe their surroundings more thoroughly. As to be expected in an area commonly referred to as the Highlands, the altitude and ground relief were considerately more varied than what he was used to in the plains of Camelot. The northern mountain range, towards which Errin had been sent, was to most extreme display of the case, and spiked Gaius' curiosity. After all, remote locations impractical for humans to settle were the most likely to house secrets from eras long gone. And while the closeness to unknown territory was certainly exciting, since he would not be allowed to investigate the Highlands more closely, Gaius branded this trip as quite the hollow research opportunity. At least the Colossai themselves were likely to provide new findings.

Merlin's sudden shift in stance and posture was apparent enough to break through Gaius' thought-clouded gaze. Elizabeth had noticed the change as well. "Is there something the matter, Merlin?"

"It seems as though King and Diane have stirred up some trouble," Merlin answered nonchalantly. Gaius interest sparked, and he observed every shift in Merlin's expression in hopes of gathering more information.

"How severe?" Elizabeth asked, far less calm then Merlin.

"It is difficult to say for certain; whoever they're faced up against possess a remarkable magic presence. It might even be a Colossai. Though they should be fine," Merlin added upon becoming aware of Elizabeth's worried expression.

Even while concentrating all his thoughts in search for the magic presence, Gaius felt no more than a sort of commotion within the magic current, located somewhere close to the northern mountain range. The information he could draw from this observation was frustratingly incomplete. And while Merlin and Elizabeth focused on the distant disturbance, their gazes locked northwards, Gaius noticed an oddity far more imminent and concerning. The relative silence had struck him as odd before, but just now he had found the cause.

Katrina had disappeared.

Sometime while Merlin had interrogated Gaius, she had to have slipped out of their immediate attention. And while he was unable to find reason behind this strange behavior of hers, logic dictated she had to have left their field of view in a relative short amount of time. Much of the surrounding terrain offered no place to disappear this quickly. Which only left the ravine behind them as a viable option.

Unbeknownst to Merlin and Elizabeth, Gaius closed in on the crevice that split the black cliff, a narrow doorway to the home of the Colossai, the magic seal. Apprehension slowed his steps. Once the rock formations to either side enclosed him, the light dimmed, as the sunrays had no chance to reach the canyon ground. And with the lack of sunlight came the cold. More complete, more chilling then the sharp winds outside. Gaius' hand reached for the pendant around his neck, a gift from Merlin and supposedly a lucky charm.

When he stepped around a bend in the ravine, and his eyes had adjusted to the murkiness, he was able to see Katrina. She stood motionless at the end of the path, transfixed by the sight of the seal. A dark oval of twisting black and purple veins hovered before her, much taller than she was, its upper rim almost reached the height of the cliff walls. An inconceivable force had torn a hole into the wavering surface, and scraps of dark magic leaked from the opening like the incense at the chapel in Camelot. It even smelled like incense. The intense flavor made Gaius' head spin.

And in spite of the ominous presence, and despite of the warning signs, Katrina took another step forward, her hand stretched to touch the workings of dark magic. The seal welcomed her with wide open arms and swallowed her in a sinister embrace.

Then she was gone.

* * *

**(A/N)** This chapter is late for a couple reasons, but the delay mostly stems from the fact that I struggled to incorporate a few crucial details that will become important later on. I'm still unsure if I handled them as well as I wanted to.

Oh, and if you ever have any questions regarding characters or aspects of the worldbuilding I altered for this fic, feel free to ask. Because the manga is still ongoing and canon keeps changing, I had to make some assumptions about how NnT would end, and some of my predictions are pretty far off. (I'm looking at you, Chaos!) I might not be able to answer some questions for spoiler reasons, but I will try my best.

Thank you for reading.


	10. Beyond the Seal

– Six years before The Fall –

Spring lay just around the corner, and a few early signs had already managed to slip past winter's firm grip on the world. Such as the bright, green sprouts of grass and daffodils shooting out of the ground, at nights still covered by frost; or the bee awakened by the warmth of the past days that was buzzing past Katrina's head.

Giggling because of the confused movements the insect performed, Katrina reached out with tiny hands in an attempt to touch its furred body or translucent sets of wings. Of course, she failed, her fingers only brushed through empty air. In spite of her poor performance, Katrina leaned backwards until her head touched down on the pillows of damp grass blades while grinning extatically. The aimless bee flew its turns above her head. She wanted to flutter around like that too.

"Katrina, you'll catch a cold," Elizabeth said from the porch. Her eyes swam in worry when Katrina rolled over to look at her.

Katrina verified that her dress was indeed wet from dew where the white fabric had touched the grass, but since her hands didn't feel colder than usual, she ignored her mom's worry. "Ivy said, Fairies don't get cold," she said defiantly and rolled from her stomach to her back to let her eyes face skyward. The blue was prettier than all the colors in her painting collection.

The white, puffy clouds of lower hemispheres raced past the lazy storm clouds that promised the arrival of rain. Maybe her dad would go puddle-hopping with her later.

"Sure, but you aren't a Fairy, caterpillar," Meliodas said and walked over so that his face blocked her view. The term of endearment, spoken with such deep parental affection, made her giggle. "And quite frankly, neither is Ivy."

Katrina extended her arms in anticipation, and Meliodas obeyed by scooping her from the ground, her arms now locked around his neck.

"But," he continued once he had made sure she would keep her hold, "ya don't need to be a Fairy to fly. Grab on tight, okay?"

Katrina barely had the time to nod into his shoulder before her dad called forth a pair of dark wings that extended from his back. Their edges were ragged, ever-shifting in shape to adapt to each change in the air's current, the surface covered in shining patterns of dark purple that formed tiny landscapes. Awestruck, Katrina reached out to place a hand against the wings' texture, curious if they even had a texture to feel. But her mom took hold of her wrist to place it back around Meliodas' neck and away from the magically-forged wings.

A silent conversation passed between her parents Katrina didn't understand. Her mother seemed conflicted about something, and her troubled gaze pinned Meliodas with an unspoken question. There might have been criticism in her face, too. But whatever wordless reassurance Meliodas offered her, it appeased Elizabeth enough to smile at both of them lovingly. She took a step back and closed her eyes, before she too conjured wings out of thin air, four in total. Unlike with her dad's, Katrina knew the white feathers that made up her mom's wings and how fluffy they were, but she still gaped at their beauty.

Meliodas bend his knees a little before soaring upwards to hover a couple feet above the ground. A breeze took hold of Katrina's hair and obscured her view. She grinned even wider. Through a veil of blonde strands, she saw Elizabeth gaining altitude with two minimalist flaps of her wings.

"Ya like it?" Meliodas asked and shifted Katrina to make it more comfortable for both of them.

"I want higher!"

Meliodas chuckled. "Roger that."

Then he let gravity behind and spiraled higher and higher to where the air was thinner yet at the same time purer. The Boar Hat and the surrounding trees and hills shrunk to tiny specks below them, until they evolved into the limited outline of a map like the one Katrina had seen in her uncle's study room. Liones' capital dissolved into obscurity between the misty cloth of stray clouds that hovered alongside and soon below them. Katrina soaked in the view with all its details, until she found herself among the puffy, fine-weather clouds she had admired from below. Tiny droplets of water, too light to be pulled down by gravity, placed themselves on her face and hair. She tasted one with stuck-out tongue and made a face when the water filled her mouth with an iron aftertaste.

Eyes shining with Goddess Clan magic, Elizabeth joined them, and an affectionate smile broke through the clouds of doubt. When Katrina extended an arm towards her, she pried Katrina out of Meliodas' hold. She kept one hand free to interweave her fingers with his.

"You know you can fly just like we do," Elizabeth whispered into Katrina's ear. "All you need to do is remember the magic inside you and make use of it."

Katrina gulped; the joy of the moment was pushed into the background, and all she could think of was that day she lost control two years ago. Her memory was fuzzy, filled with too many loud noises to get a clear grasp, but she remembered the yells and terrified faces. All this purple color on the floor.

"But won't I hurt you? Or daddy?" As she had hurt Cynthia.

"You could never hurt us. Of course, if you don't want to try you don't have to."

"And if you fall, I will catch you," Meliodas promised. "Not that you'll need my help."

With a little more assurance, Katrina closed her eyes and concentrated. Two polar forces lived inside her, at constant war with each other, and her mood helped gain one the upper hand over the other. Joy, curiosity and excitement made the beacon of light shine brighter, while fear and anger nurtured the dark hole she feared might hurt those around her. For now, the Goddess magic ruled supreme, but the peace wasn't made to last. Katrina knew how fast the tides could turn.

She focused on the delight she had experienced when rocketing into the sky and delved into the pool of light. The image of her mother's wings appeared before her inner eye, the soft individual feathers and the strength behind them. In order to tap into the magic's potential, Katrina was forced to give up control, and she hesitated at the edge, balancing outside the pool of Goddess power, where her fingers already prickled with its warmth. Then she took the leap of faith – and it paid off.

When she opened her eyes, Katrina realized that her mom had let go of her; only their fingertips were still interlaced. She hovered in midair. All on her own. Her parents beamed at her.

Unable to believe her accomplishment, Katrina craned her neck to study the white-feathered wings between her shoulder blades. They were almost identical to her mother's, but smaller and a bit clumsy when they moved. And they were the sole reason Katrina remained suspended in the air. Any command she send them was followed by an action, with no more delay or necessary thought process than with any other muscle.

It was incredible.

More liberating and euphoric than anything she had experienced before.

Each upcurrent became an invitation to rise alongside with, every gust a stream to follow until she became jaded with this path too and escaped its pull. Katrina sparkled with joy as she swirled between the clouds, right beside her parents. She laughed until she was tired of it, and even then, she beamed senselessly, back in her dad's arms, as they descended to earth. The first raindrops hurried past them and tickled Katrina's bare arms.

"Now that you're so amazing at flying, the name 'caterpillar' doesn't really fit you anymore," her dad mused as he placed her on her own feet once he touched down on solid ground. "I might have to call you 'butterfly' from now on!"

* * *

Ivy was certain they had been going in circles for at least the past hour. Which was quite the feat to pull off with the surrounding mountain ranges as a fixpoint to navigate with. And still, the stone formation to her right, with its unique arrangement of erratics that didn't seem to blend with the type of volcanic rocks found all around, looked all too familiar. But she wasn't eager to inform Meliodas about this detail, and instead kept her comments on the Dragon's Sin lackluster sense of direction to herself.

In regards to Escanor, he was either oblivious to the aimless wandering, or as reluctant to call the Captain out as Ivy was. He trotted behind them in his far weaker night-time form, even though the sun made its way past the herds of dark clouds every now and then. In addition to less than impressive physique, Escanor showed no durability in this condition, as he shivered against any mild gust. After the Holy War, he had suppressed his «Sunshine» powers more often, and not even the harsh environment of the Highlands convinced him to drop the act. A shame; Ivy wouldn't mind the company of a small sun to battle the chill winds.

Despite the cold, Ivy felt much better outside as opposed to the cramped rooms of the Boar Hat. The smell of grass and mountain pines was a relief, as was the air filling her lungs that seemed richer once the noise of human settlements faded in the distance. Not that she despised humans as a clan in any particular way, but their preference to trap themselves in buildings when everything outside was so much more _alive_ baffled her.

When Meliodas stopped walking, Ivy nearly bumped into him, too occupied with other thoughts. "Ya gotta be kidden me," Meliodas murmured, before raising his voice. "Ban, ya moron, what are you doing here? You had your own direction you were supposed to go."

Past Meliodas' shoulders, Ivy identified Ban followed by Lance and Gowther a couple yards closer to the cliffside hugging the valley. Upon being called out by the Captain, Ban closed in on them with an intentionally slow stroll.

"Don't give me that crap, Captain," he said, his voice raised to carry over the declining distance. "You're the one who doesn't know how directions work."

Ivy was inclined to agree with Ban's assessment, but figured that adding fuel to the argument between the two adults maybe wasn't the best idea. Lance gave her a helpless look from behind Ban, one that ended in rolled eyes as Ban smacked Meliodas' forehead so violently he was sent flying backwards, right into Escanor.

"I've been going in a straight line the entire time," Meliodas said once he had jumped back to his feet as if nothing ever happened.

"And here I thought _I_ was the one drunk on this trip. Remember the cave of the Clay Dragons? You led us so deep into the tunnels that Diane was worried she would have to starve to death down there."

"Your memory is as bad as your ability to follow directions. _I_ was the one who got us out of that maze."

"Yeah, by busting through the walls and causing the entire mountain to collapse."

"Since we've happened to run into each other already, it might be easier to continue searching the area as a larger group," Gowther said diplomatically and managed to take the heat out of his friends' argument.

"What's scouting the area useful for anyway?" Ivy asked. If she had had a say in the matter, she would have voted to repair the seal and end the trip there, without dragging out the ruse in front of their parents. After all, the Colossai would twiddle their thumbs within the seal until Mordred would come around and enslave them under his will if Gaius's lecture from last evening was to be believed. The destruction they might come across during this scout trip would be the work of Demons and nothing else.

"Even a single Colossai left to run wild will cause major trouble for your people," Gowther said. "It will be easier if we deal with them before closing the seal."

"But you _can _close the seal again, right?" Ivy asked; uncertainty made her voice unstable.

"If Merlin can't do it, no one can," Ban said. He didn't exactly succeed in easing Ivy's concerns. "She's a total cheater, ya know."

"How rude!" Escanor protested. "Merlin has worked very hard to perfect her abilities and has used them to help us out of dangerous situations many times. We should show more gratitude towards her, instead of talking behind her back."

Ban snickered. "Especially you."

Escanor's face reddened, and he dropped the argument in favor of a timely sneeze. Ivy paid little attention to them because of the shadow creeping over Meliodas' face at the mention of the seal, but it came and went so quickly she might have imagined it. And he overplayed the grim expression with a grin right away. "Guess we better get going doing our job then. So, let's hunt some Colossai!" he said and repaid Ban's previous assault with a forceful jab to Ban's ribs, resulting in shared laughter.

They continued their way south, this time with Gowther as the navigator, while Lance and Ivy silently followed the arguing and joking adults. Lance appeared more stressed by the presence of his father than Ivy had seen him in a while; every loud comment from Ban jerked him out of his thoughts, and his right foot got caught in a hollow underneath the grass more than once. But she had no idea how to help him overcome the tension. In fact, if they had been paired with her parents, she would have been even more on edge than he was.

The landscape changed, and the fields of tall-growing grass gave way for barren ground that slowly ascended. The path, slippery from lose scree, became more difficult to follow, sometimes losing itself between the rocks and stunted foliage. Escanor in particular suffered the consequences, as he fell behind the group further and further. But Lance's breathing had become heavy as well. And while Ivy did yearn for the ease with which her Giant form would have climbed the rocky slope, she managed the ascent without much trouble.

Camlann's Highlands stretched before her, an ocean of green hills and mountains, tall and wide. In between the untouched landscape, collections of human housing could be spotted, and to the far east, a larger manmade structure hugged the side of the mountain range that might have been Camlann's capital. The terraced layout of the city with its dark slate constructions was nearly invisible from afar, only the handful of towers stood out, and the bronze finials on top of their steep tented roofs reflected the sun.

But it were the outskirts of a forest far to the south that drew Ivy's attention the most. Its lush array of green colors contrasted the lighter, more watered-out tones of the surrounding plains. When Ivy squinted, she even imagined to see a tall, magenta-colored tree towering over the forest's heart. Lance brushed her arm, hopelessly out of breath, as he, too, reached the summit, but Ivy barely noticed. He gasped at the sight of the Fairy King's Forest. Home.

"Home, sweet home, isn't it?" Meliodas said as if he had picked the words right out of Ivy's brain. But it was Ban he was talking to.

"Still getting used to it. Turns out trying every type of booze doesn't take all that long, so settling down was the next best thing. Gotta say, to realize King and Diane are the best company around's kind of a scary thought, but those chatty Fairies are even worse to be honest."

"You know, I'm sure Elaine wouldn't mind moving over to the human world if you'd ask her," Meliodas said as he side-eyed Ban.

"Which is exactly why I'm _not_ gonna ask her," Ban said, his tone even but filled with conviction. "She's safer in the Fairy King's Forest, and I won't take risks when it comes to her anymore. We both got what we wanted. No reason to push our luck. Nothing good has ever come out of a Fairy leaving the forest…"

Lance stared at his father in stunned silence, as if he was seeing him for the first time. Ivy had always taken Ban as a laidback man who was fun to have around but who rarely showed great care or worry. To hear him speak about the lengths he would go to, to ensure Elaine's well-being this earnestly was an eyeopener she hadn't seen coming.

"I know what you mean," Meliodas said and put a hand against Ban's shoulder.

Lance looked back and forth between Meliodas and Ban in awe, awe that turned bitter with longing for their past life Ivy was so familiar with. Something in his lost expression compelled her to take his hand and squeeze it with what she hoped to be reassurance. He would return to this life, they all would – Ivy needed to believe this. She had no other reason to walk forward. The look Lance gave her then was equal parts surprised and thankful.

Gowther stepped closer and reminded Ivy that she and Lance had been looking at the Fairy King's Forest a little too wistfully. "I hope you don't mind me asking," he said "but I've been wondering for a while if you have any family left to return to."

"Yes," Lance answered, and Ivy added a less confident 'hopefully'.

"I'm asking because yesterday you alluded to have lost someone to the Colossai. It would also explain the determination all of you continue to showcase."

"We've… all lost someone," Lance said hesitantly, but to Ivy's surprise he continued after a few beats he used to choose the right words. "For me it was my father. He fought alongside the other knights to protect a neighboring town from the Colossai. He didn't make it back."

The grief in Lance's eyes came to the forefront for a second, before he shifted his gaze to Ivy. In expectation of a confirmation of what she had been keeping from him and what she feared to mention out loud. Ivy's answer almost cost her the entire remnants of her emotional stability. "I lost my parents and my three younger siblings to… the Colossai."

To Mordred.

"Sorry to hear that," Ban said with sincere compassion in his voice. He and Meliodas had been following their conversation unnoticed. "I know how it feels."

"All the more reason to set things right and finish up the Colossai," Meliodas said, but his heartening grin didn't reach his eyes. "Speaking of; Gowther, anything around that we should know about?"

"I've failed to detect any presences that could resemble a Colossai, but since I don't have further knowledge to work with, my observation might be flawed. All I can sense are traces of magic not far from here."

"Then let's start there," Meliodas said and pushed westwards past a completely spent Escanor, who had used his last breaths to climb the slope. No chance to rest for him.

The group followed the mountain ridge, and Ivy was relieved to notice that Lance seemed to have caught himself as he walked in front of her with newfound energy. She told herself to adapt some of his optimism but continued to steal glances at the Fairy King's Forest glistening in the sun. It seemed so far out of reach. And even as she managed to tear her eyes from her home, the traces of magic Gowther had mentioned troubled her. She failed to sense anything out of the usual, but she doubted Gowther was mistaking about the irregularity. The uncertainty about the magic's origin gave her a headache. And as a crooked stone tower, balancing on the ridge and covered by lichen, came into view, Ivy chocked.

For an outsider, the spikes of condensed earth that pierced the tower would have been meaningless, a strange but unexplained occurrence. But she knew these forms too well, had wielded them in battle herself. The attack that had destroyed the bulk of the tower, that had caused the upper bricks to collapse, that had taken the lives of everyone inside the building was a Giant's handiwork.

Ivy had never felt a strong connection towards her mother's clan, but this sight appalled her more than anything she had seen or heard them do. Only coldhearted monsters could have been capable of a deed this horrific. The ragged doll, a thing so ugly it could have only belonged to a child connecting precious memories with the piece of linen, in the dust before Ivy's feet nearly made her throw up.

"If Colossai can do that, we need to seriously step up our game. It looks more like a Giant's earth manipulation to me," Ban said and moved through the site of destruction to inspect the other side of the tower with a grim face.

"That is undisputable," Gowther said. "A form as distinct as this would have been an impossible feat for everyone without the needed magical ability. From what I can sense, the attacker didn't allow any survivors."

"Why are Giants still doing something this monstrous? Why can't they see how wrong this is?" Ivy's voice sounded hoarse, and she bend down to pick the dust-covered doll from the ground. The plaything could have belonged to Aura. Or Helbram.

"Fighting is part of their culture, their identity," Meliodas said. "They were told that victory and honor are the only things that matter. Some take these values too far and allow them to consume every action they take. They don't know any better. No one was there to teach them."

"Doesn't matter." Meliodas and Lance looked at Ivy in surprise, but she continued with steel in her voice. "They are responsible for what they do, and no one else. And if they commit murder like this, no one is to blame but them."

Meliodas' eyes turned empty as he studied the tower and the stone spikes surrounding it. He seemed to want to punish himself by taking in every horrific detail. "You're right…" he said quietly.

"Maybe these stray Giants really are the ones to blame," Lance said, "but if we are unhappy with the way they behave, complaining about it doesn't change anything. If they can't see their crimes, someone needs to be there to tell them. To show them that they have a chance to be better than what we initially branded them as. If you wish that the Giants leave the path of violence they followed for centuries, you have to make the first step."

Ivy lowered her gaze; the firm belief in Lance's eyes had been too strong for her to stand against. And as much as she wanted to tear apart his argument, she couldn't. Because he might have a point.

"What do you wish for, Lance?" Gowther asked once it became apparent that the discussion would not be resumed.

Lance struggled with the question and looked sideways, towards the vast landscape in the south. "Uhm, I… I always wanted to see the ocean."

Ivy bit her lip, but Ban returned before she could say anything. "Nothing," he said. "No traces, footprints, or any sign of survivors. The attack couldn't have happened too long ago; the stuff on the inside's not yet rotten. But I got nothing on where the attacker disappeared to."

"That was to be expected. We –" Meliodas stopped midsentence, and his gaze snapped into the direction from which they had come. It was less a sound or visible disturbance in the distance that made Ivy's skin crawl, but more the unexplainable feeling of something being utterly _wrong_.

"Demon Clan magic," Gowther said. The air around them turned colder and heavy with foreboding. Escanor, still shaken from the physical exercise, shivered.

"We better get back to Merlin," Ban said between gritted teeth. Without consent from the Captain, he stormed off. Meliodas and Gowther followed Ban more cautiously, but equally worried by the dark presence.

Despite the urgency of the situation, Ivy spared an extra second to place the doll on the ledge of a half-destroyed hole in the tower wall that had once been a window. She traced her fingers over the surface of the nearest stone spike and felt the steady heartbeat of the earth. So familiar. Then she turned and caught up to Lance, a sickening taste in her mouth.

* * *

"Where is everyone?" Lance asked. The field in front of the ravine was deserted; the group surrounding Merlin had disappeared.

"They went further inside the canyon to investigate the spike of Demon magic," Gowther said and pointed towards the opening in the cliffside. "As for King, Diane, and your other friend, it is safe to assume they have not yet returned from scouting the area to the north."

Lance accepted the explanation with a nod and let his gaze trail up and down the rock formation into which the gaping hole holding the seal was embedded. Nothing about it stuck out as remarkable, and he wondered how on earth Mordred had been able to find this exact spot without any help. The odds had to be slim as paper. Lance turned his back to the wall and its unanswered question and studied Ivy, who viewed the canyon with a grim expression. Her left foot tapped up and down in reflex.

"You okay?" he asked but was met with a less than pleasant stare.

"Sure." That was the only response he got, and it wasn't all that convincing either.

The encounter with the tower destroyed by Giants must have seriously rubbed her the wrong way. At the top of the slope, she been the one reassuring him, and she had even talked about The Fall without an aggressive outburst. But now she kept her distance with a vehemence that concerned him. Maybe he should have kept his talkative mouth shut about what he had to say on the matter of the Giant Clan's culture issues. Frankly, what the Giants heralded as perfect behavior and Ivy's opinion on it was none of his business. The advice Diane had given him about trusting Ivy and showing patience was less than a day old, and he had already blown it. Great.

But that did not excuse her from giving him a headache whenever he tried to talk to her.

"You wanna stand there till next winter?" Ivy asked. Lance hoped her tone indicated childish banter rather than spite. In any case, he had been zoning out, and the four Sins in their company had entered the canyon unnoticed to him. He hurried to follow Ivy, before she could level another cheap line against him – which he still much preferred over stoic distance.

At the end of the narrow passageway, they were not only met with Meliodas and company, but also Elizabeth and Merlin. The latter was penetrating Gaius with a loud and colorful tirade, while the subject of her aggression shrunk under her scrutiny.

"… should not even be possible! Whatever it was that you saw, it can't be the entirety of the story. This is a place brimming with dark magic, and neither her nor you had any business going near the seal, not to mention coming in contact with it. If it was a spell like you said, an outside stimulus should have been sufficient in breaking it. All you would have needed to do was call out to her!"

Merlin paused her verbal assault to take a deep breath, allowing Elizabeth to step in. "Please leave it at that, Sis-sis. It's too late for that now anyway."

Lance was about to ask for what exactly it was too late, but Ivy voiced a far more relevant and pressing question first. "Where's Katrina?"

He very nearly slapped himself for his inattentiveness. His brain, occupied with figuring out Ivy's strange behavior, had failed to process Katrina's absence, but now it struck him with the severity of a ten-ton rock bowl to the face.

"Gaius told us she came here to touch the seal and is now trapped within it," Elizabeth explained.

"But you can get her out again, right? The seal's already damaged, so she can come back without a problem. Right?!" Lance broke into panicked conspiracy speculations as the extent of Katrina's disappearance dawned on him.

She was awfully vulnerable to the persuasion of dark magic as is – one needed to look no further than the destruction she had caused when she last used the Time Crystal –, and the texture of the seal behind Merlin and Gaius reminded of her Demon powers, complete with ominous purple lines. Meaning she was in more trouble than the Sins realized.

"Not that easily," Meliodas said. The expression of deep-running concern he had worn since their way back still clouded his face. "The seal may be damaged, but it's still capable of containing everyone with lesser power. It's held on to most of the Colossai, so I doubt Katrina will fare any better."

"Then someone has to follow Katrina inside and help her get out," Lance said and looked over the line of worried adults.

It was the simplest solution for sure, and in the best case this approach would prevent anyone from discovering the combination of Goddess and Demon power Katrina could use to escape by herself. Both Meliodas and Merlin were well-fit for the job, but to Lance's surprise, they seemed hesitant to take action. Maybe out of fear.

"That won't work either," Merlin said; she had calmed herself enough to drop the hard-hitting tone she had used to lecture Gaius. "If one of us, with a high enough magical presence, enters the seal, any attempt at returning to the mortal plain will only damage the seal further. In all likelihood, an undertaking like that would free the remaining Colossai."

They were running in circles without a chance of getting forward. Katrina couldn't free herself, they couldn't free Katrina, and every second they wasted arguing increased the risk for Katrina, who could be torn to shreds by the Colossai any second. And she was the one in possession of the crystal. Without the magical item, Lance saw no way to get her back, much less return to their point in time.

The situation was shaping itself into an all-out disaster.

"Then there's no other way. We have to fully destroy the seal from our side." The firm conviction with which Elizabeth voiced her opinion made everyone's head turn with a perplexed stare. Only Meliodas showed a small smile and the quintessence of adoration.

Lance was first and foremost amazed. While he would have never doubted Elizabeth's willpower to do whatever necessary to protect her daughter, to do the same thing for a stranger she had known for less than a day only spoke of her selfless and kind attributes. And better yet, her words managed to finally evoke the missing sense of duty in the group.

"You're right, of course," Merlin said, only to step past Gaius and extend a hand in front of the three-thousand-year-old seal, ready to snap her fingers and bring order into this mess. "«Absolute canc–»"

The incantation never even finished passing Merlin's lips, as the mountain range around them first quaked with an ear-bursting sound and then crumbled around them, and boulders the size of small houses rained down around them.

In the ensuing tumult, Ivy used her magical ability to avert a tumbling boulder that would have crushed her otherwise, before Merlin conjured a large «Perfect Cube» to keep them safe from the oncoming rubble. With a rumble that echoed through his bones, the canyon collapsed inwards, until Lance's view was filled with rocks and stones piling outside of the magical barrier.

When the barrage ceased and the dust had settled enough to see past the wavering walls of the cube, Merlin dispelled the «Perfect Cube» to better examine the damage done. The canyon walls were reduced to shadows of their old outline, but the seal at its dead-end was miraculously intact and hovered in the air behind them. It was more the sight in the opposite direction that concerned Lance.

Past the broken entrance to the canyon stood five massive structures of humanoid shape, their stone surface pale, almost white in the sun. Featureless skeletons of an era millennia ago. Even without the paralysis that overtook Ivy, Lance would have recognized them as Colossai.

Some of them had indeed been free from the beginning. And whether it was due to the spike of Demon magic close to their former prison, or because of the large group of people that had invaded their territory, they had returned. To destroy.

Lance unsheathed the twin swords from his back more out of force of habit than actual willingness to fight. Ivy braced herself beside him.

But this time they wouldn't need to rely solely on themselves. This time they had six highly capable adults around to deal with the threat; a nice change of pace from the past couple weeks.

"Try using magical attacks instead of brute force," Meliodas said while taking a step backwards. A reasonable thing to do, considering the Colossai had to be least forgiving to the one individual in the group who possessed the same Demon power that had trapped them for centuries. But what made him believe physical attacks had little use was a mystery to Lance, though he was satisfied to trust the advice for now. Even if that rendered him even more of a dead weight in this fight.

Before he had a chance to further dwell on the matter, the five Colossai rushed forward in perfect unison, and the scenery erupted in chaos.

* * *

There was no doubt about it. The seal had called out to her.

No one else had taken notice of the whispers filled with dark and twisted promises. At first Katrina had tried to ignore the pull towards the hole in the rock formation, but like a humming in her ears, the whispers had gained intensity, never so that she had to deal with physical discomfort, but long past the point of irritating. Only when she had taken the first step, had the ringing in her ears eased. But the call had lost nothing of its persuasive force.

The walk to cross rest of the distance was as easy as it was a blurry experience. Before Katrina had realized the dim surroundings of the canyon, she stood in front of the torn-down seal.

The hole in the seal's surface disfigured its strange beauty, a gaping wound that had been left untreated. The tear allowed for a glimpse at the insides of the seal, with a darkness so absolute it made the surface covered in hazily shifting black marks look tame, even welcoming by comparison.

Katrina identified the seal as Demon magic in a moment's notice, the same magic that pulsated through her veins and that pulled her forwards with the inescapable might of gravity. Her breathing hitched, the noise thrown back from the cold walls of the canyon, but she didn't resist the calls, didn't put up a fight. Maybe the dark magic had infiltrated her mind already and had disabled her sense of danger and her voice of reason. But reaching out to touch the veil of Demon magic was more than tempting, the action was born from of a sense of longing and undeniable desire. Her inner voice fell in line with the luring sounds in her ears and called her forward. The still air filled her with warmth and treasured memories.

One last step separated her from the seal. Katrina stood so close she could see her refection in its polished surface, her features distorted by the twirling lines of darker magic that pulsated to the beat of her heart. She knew this power, had felt its presence for as long as she remembered.

Katrina placed her hand against the seal's surface, in expectance of cold. But her fingers reached out into the sickening shadows beyond, and soon her entire world was replaced with these shadows.

The voices fell silent.

Katrina failed to breathe; an invisible weight lingered on her chest accompanied by nauseating claustrophobia. Her arms, her legs became too heavy to move, her body was pulled to the ground by the unforgiving force of magically-amplified gravity. Space had become a distant memory, and all she knew was that there _wasn't __enough_. Faint, dull panic seared her throat with a scream she could not voice. Then the torture stopped, and her eyes were greeted with light.

Where Katrina had expected more darkness on this side of the seal, she was surprised to find sunlight shining down on her. And while the light was pale and without warmth, like a deceptive mirror image of reality, it was sunlight nonetheless. Katrina dug her fingernails into the ground where she had landed, grateful to have escaped the dark prison. Once her hands stopped shaking, she dared to take in her surroundings, a barren wasteland of rock and stone, bathed in colors of restrained browns, beiges and greys. The air was still and silent and without taste. In contrast to the vibrant world outside, this place appeared lifeless.

But it wasn't entirely empty.

Ahead, a collection of stone formations broke up the monotony. At first, Katrina thought them as dead as the rest of this world, but then they moved. As if her arrival had triggered a command, the dozen or so stone creatures reared their heads and rose to their feet like a single entity.

Katrina had never seen one up close, but there was little doubt to be had about the creatures' identity as Colossai. And as the intoxicating effects of the Demon magic dripped out of her mind, she realized the severity of her mistake. She had allowed the seal's sentient magic to manipulate her to the point where she had followed its command, and now stood face to face with Mordred's future subjects, entities so powerful they had ripped through the Sins' defenses during The Fall of Liones.

As the fear became overbearing and threatened to freeze her, Katrina spun to face the way she came. The tear in the seal was visible from this side as well, a slim line of black hovering in the air a couple feet behind her.

She had made the first step to run for her life, when the horrifying realization hit her: the Colossai could follow her through the broken seal. Worse yet, her movement might trigger the creatures and help them realize they were no longer contained. Hadn't Lance said that the Colossai had remained within the seal until Mordred came looking for them? And wouldn't that indicate that Katrina might have already altered the flow of time when she answered to the Demon magic and entered the seal?

Out of reflex, Katrina reached for the Time Crystal in her pocket. Its cool surface gave her a fixation point other than the urge to run as fast as she could, but she hesitated to use the magic housing within. She had been told about the dangers of the item, had experienced the effects on her body and mind numerous times. And the bleak truth was, even if she were to use it, the crystal only allowed to bend time. She would still return to this exact spot within the seal to face the Colossai anew – if the usage of the crystal wouldn't make her collapse first. The Colossai had shown no signs of aggression so far, but there was no way to know when that might change.

Slowly, Katrina made a tiny step sideways towards the rift marking her way out, while keeping an eye on the Colossai. Their movements were slow, cautious even, as if they were unsure how to react to the sudden appearance of an outsider.

But rather than focusing on the threat ahead, Katrina should have put more thought to her own steps because, as she moved her feet across the treacherous terrain, she slipped. She only lost balance for a brief moment, but the panic surged to overtake her, and with the fear always came the darkness.

When putting it kindly, Katrina's Demon magic was a defense mechanism activated by stress, fear, and yes, wrath. If these emotions overwhelmed her, the darkness emerged from the debts into which Katrina had banned them to take control of her body. This had happened more often when she had been a child, she had even hurt her best friend. Ever since then, she had suppressed any of these negative emotions, but sometimes all this struggling simply wasn't enough.

The darkness must have only flashed briefly in her eyes, but the Colossai still reacted. With speed Katrina hadn't imagined them to possess, the horde stormed towards her, and the ground shook with every step. Now she _was_ running, away from the Colossai and away from the rift, with the slim hope that they would ignore the path to the outside world, and that she would find cover.

But the inside of the seal wasn't designed with the intent to offer cover, and as Katrina realized disheartened, it wasn't all that spacious either. At first, she didn't take notice of the shimmer in the air, and disregarded the wavering specks as a trick of the pale light. But the distortion of light particles marked in fact the edge of the seal, an invisible outer wall that left her with nowhere to turn to. She lunged at the wall in pure despair and was sent stumbling backwards. The wall hadn't even flinched.

Katrina forced herself to wrestle down the ever-rising panic and took a couple deep breaths. The Colossai had caught up to her, and they reached out to grab her, each of their fingers strong enough to crush her bones. Flight was no longer an option, so Katrina reached for the last hope she had and tapped into the divine power of the Goddess Race within her.

"«ARK»!"

For once, she didn't fumble the magic, and the light emitting from her outstretched hand spread to first engulf the closest Colossai and then her entire field of view. White reached all around her.

By the time she let the flow of magic cease, the spell had burnt most of her energy, and her head was spinning. But the result was nonetheless remarkable. One Colossai crumbled before her; its stone shell broke to pieces, the surface scorched from a heat greater than any earthly fire. The remaining Colossai stood out of reach, motionless once more. If the death of one of their kind affected them in any way, they masked their grief with stoic silence.

Katrina dropped to her knees as the tension snapped and the excessive usage of magic claimed its toll. For now, she was safe. Trapped in a confinement created by the Demon Clan and in company of a horde of Colossai able to take her down with one swipe of a hand, but as safe as she could be under these circumstances.

When her breathing had stabilized, Katrina's gaze shifted back to the Colossai she had taken out. Most of its defining shape was gone, the arms had turned to rubble and dust, and the solid rock once forming its head had fallen to the ground, cracked open like an egg.

But as the outer surfaces of the torso peeled back, the cracks didn't reveal stone or hollowness. Something else…

Katrina watched in horror as the mystery unfolded right in front of her eyes. With implications so far reaching she couldn't even begin to grasp them.


	11. The Truth Unveiled

– Nine years before The Fall –

For the umpteenth time this morning, Lance shifted a small, moveable part of his puzzle box in place, frowned, turned the box around, and tried his hands on a different piece. Ivy yawned and tossed her favorite ball into the air a few times, annoyed to no ends. She could almost _hear_ the shadows tick forward on their path across the mossy ground of the Fairy King's Forest as the time crept along.

Lance was a hopeless idiot. This time he ignored her in favor of the stupid puzzle box he had received for his birthday from his mother. And because Lance was a hopeless idiot, he had abandoned the world around him to spend every waking hour shifting the movable pieces of his puzzle box around in hopes of finally opening its cursed inside. He said one needed patience and strategic thinking to solve the riddle, but he only used these words as an excuse so that Ivy didn't try her luck with this thing. Not much smoother than telling her upfront she was too clumsy.

Ivy wandered in endless circles around the clearing and brushed over the stone and leather surface of her ball. In her hands, the plaything looked small, even though it had the same size as Lance's head. Waiting for him to set the puzzle box aside was boring – Ivy needed to initiate a game of catch herself.

"Heads up!" Ivy yelled and hurled the ball towards the tree under which Lance waged war against his puzzle box.

But her aim had been a little too precise, as the ball hit his head long before he reacted. Lance dropped face first into the grass, limps sprawled, and for once he didn't throw a slew of complaints at her. Was this how dead people looked like?

"You okay?" Ivy asked and bent over him. She used the opportunity to kick the cursed puzzle box into the nearest gorse bush.

"Arrrggghhh," Lance groaned and pressed his hands against his head. "Are you completely insane, Ivy? Everything's spinning – I have a second-degree concussion thanks to you."

"Well, I did warn you…"

"All you did was trying to kill me. You're the worst!"

Ivy staggered backwards and bit her lips. She franticly looked for a way to defend herself, but the only option she saw was flight. "And so are you!" she yelled and stormed through the thicket of gorse and bilberry.

The best thing about the Fairy King's Forest was its largeness. Ivy could wander through the woodlands for days on end and still find a new place she hadn't visited before. But far more importantly, Lance had no chance to find her if she didn't want to be found. Her feet carried her into a part of the forest Lance disliked and avoided whenever possible, and her bare toes sunk into the springy moss. The life energy of the plants helped calm her nerves. The trees around her stretched taller and grew into crooked shapes to make them look like disfigured old men. Their branches reached for the sky like fleshless fingers, too ancient to carry leaves. Unlike Lance, Ivy found this place welcoming because of its silence. Almost everywhere else in the forest, she was surrounded by the chatter of Fairies or the buzzing of their wings, but here, she could take a breath of solitude. Far away from the obnoxious sound of puzzle box pieces clicking in place.

Unfortunately, Ivy wasn't granted the silence she had hoped to find.

When she passed another couple of bizarrely grown trees, she stumbled into a group of Fairies, four in total. Taken aback by Ivy's sudden appearance, they dashed back and forth across the clearing in headless disarray like a swarm of roused birds. One of them regained his composure to recognize her and rose to face her at eye level, a wide but shaky grin on his face.

"Hi Ives, fancy meeting you around here," Aeral said. His tone indicated he was far from thrilled to see her.

Aeral was young by Fairy standards and had only recently started to grow his translucent wings, but he still surpassed Ivy and Lance by at least a hundred years. Everything about his appearance screamed unremarkable, from his pale, porcelain-like skin and ashen hair to his forest-green eyes, which made him the most by-the-book example of a Fairy Ivy could imagine. No wonder Lance and he got along so well – their dullness matched each other perfectly.

"And what are you all doing?" Ivy asked.

A shadow of stress emerged and was then quickly suppressed on Aeral's face. He avoided her gaze, a clear sign that he planned to lie. "Nothing really. Just talking a little about, uhm… stuff."

Not satisfied by the response in the slightest, Ivy let her eyes wander across the other Fairies, who had calmed and floated still out of reach. She knew them as some of the youngest members of the Fairy Clan, and she had played tag with a few of them before. But Ivy had never felt welcomed in their group. Lance might be able to look past the reluctance they showed whenever these Fairies spent time with them, but Ivy rarely could.

"Okay, can I join you talking then?" Ivy asked. Her instincts told her it was a useless thing to ask, and she was best advised to leave, but her parents liked to say that making friends required effort.

"Uhm, you see… this is more of a Fairy thing. No offense." Aeral gave an unconvincing apologetic look and shrugged.

"I'm half Fairy," Ivy said, but uncertainty found its way into her voice to betray her. When she made another step forward, Aeral darted away from her outstretched hand in surprise. No, in fear.

"Not the point," the single female Fairy in the group said. "Your half-half, which makes you a perversion of the rules of nature. Awful enough that the traitorous Fairy King abandoned the Forest for hundreds of years, but to engage in such an abnormal liaison with a _Giant_– it really does show how deep we have fallen as a clan."

The words 'abnormal liaison' rung in Ivy's ears, even though the meaning escaped her – the tone with which the Fairy had spit them out was enough to clump her throat. She felt like a criminal, the same distress ransacked her thoughts whenever she borrowed her mom's Sacred Treasure unnoticed.

Awkward silence befell the rest of the group. A bird struck a single chord before it flew towards friendlier sceneries. Aeral was the first one to raise his voice, but he too shifted in the air with discomfort. "Megine, this is pretty much treason you're talking about. And in front of his daughter –"

"Oh, shut up Aeral, as if you've never thought the same! You're just too much of a coward to say it out loud. I'll never understand what Demon drives you to spend so much time with that human-halfling. And for some ludicrous reason, you still shuffle around the Fairy King, despite his questionable acquaintances."

While these words still hung in the air, Megine rushed off in a blur. The other Fairies had the decency to look embarrassed before, one by one they fled the scene until only Aeral remained.

"Will you… do me a favor, Ives?" he asked. "Could you _not _mention this to anyone? I don't agree with what Megine said, you know her, she's a bit egocentric and likes the sound of her own voice, so…"

Until now, Ivy had locked her gaze to the ground beside her feet, as if the roots and patches of moss provided the answers to the universe. But Aeral's hollow words broke through the calm she tried so desperately to maintain. Did he talk about her and her dad the same way whenever he hung around with Lance? How many more Fairies viewed her with resentment? Abnormal liaison…

Without another look at his traitorous face, Ivy swung her arm so the back of her hand connected with Aeral midair and brushed him aside like a disgusting insect. Then she ran off, past the old trees full of lies and the twisted undergrowth with more lies hiding between their tendrils. Bitterness weighed down her heart, but she continued to run until the shadow of the great tree welcomed her with the relative safety of home.

"Dad, am I abnormal?"

Her dad placed the wooden figure he had been working on to look at Ivy. With a mere thought he could form a piece of hardwood into the most fantastical shapes of people, animals, and mythical creatures, and on other days, Ivy loved to cuddle beside him and watch. But the ever-same words ran amuck in her thoughts without remorse and without a sign of slowing.

"What makes you say that?" King asked, his tone harsher than usual.

Ivy placed her head on her knees and tried her best to avoid his gaze by pretending to look after a crowd of Fairies as they passed the outskirts of the clearing at the foot of the great tree.

Ivy wasn't oblivious to the fact that she was different. At seven years of age, she was twice as tall as her father, and she had broken his arm once by accident, the bone had snapped before she had noticed she had been hurting him. She couldn't fly like Fairies should, nor did she have the ability to read the hearts of others, no matter how hard she tried. Her otherness had almost become the norm, but sometimes the loneliness became too much to swallow.

"Ivy, look at me." Hesitantly, she obeyed to meet the warm gaze of her dad. "You are not 'abnormal', nor should you ever think that you are. Whoever put this idea in your head doesn't know you and only judges you by the limits of their own worldview. Don't think less of yourself because of their words."

King had floated up to push a loose strand of hair out of her face. But the clump in her throat only grew to make Ivy choke. "It's just that… I want to have friends, too. Just like everyone else."

Ivy couldn't see her dad's face with the way her head leaned against his shoulder, but his hands stopped stroking her hair, and he stiffened.

When King resumed speaking, a distant sadness had crept into his voice. "I know you do. But as much as I want to, this is something I will never be able to help you with."

* * *

The hit from the boulder King had taken wasn't fatal, but he swayed dangerously to one side while attempting to land once the dust had cleared. Blood dripped down his forehead, and his eyes gazed into the middle distance without focus; the loss of magical energy throughout the fight had to have taken tremendous amounts of concentration to overcome. Not to mention the stream of energy he had sacrificed to protect Errin.

She had revisited the fight in her head a couple of times and was convinced that the one rock hadn't missed her with only a hair's width by chance. Her guess lay on some sort of invisible shield she had failed to notice, but without King's conformation, she had no way to be sure.

"Are you two okay?" King asked. Blood loss had turned his speech into a bit of a slur, and he nearly fell when he craned his neck to look at Diane.

Errin confirmed with a nod, while Diane did the same with her lips pressed together to stop herself from hurling worried accusations at him. Once King's battered mind had processed the information, he waved his hand in the air to call out his Sacred Treasure and encapsulate the three of them in a magic dome. The warmth of «Pollen Garden» eased the cramp in Errin's muscles, and a prickle of thankfulness ran down her spine as her reserves filled to their maximum capacity under the effects of the healing spell. King dispersed the barrier too soon for her liking, and the tranquility vanished alongside the wavering walls of yellow and green.

The color had returned to King's face, and any after-effects of the Colossai's attacks had disappeared as though none of it had happened. Only the destruction of the village around them remained, and those clay huts that had held out under the barrage of the first attack had been reduced to husks under the onslaught of boulders.

"There are other Colossai in the area, but none of them are close," King said. His voice had returned to its calm, collected self.

Errin sheathed her sword with a relieved breath. While she had gained crucial experience to work with once she and her partners would eventually run into another Colossai, she could think of more pleasant ways to pass time than repeating the event right away. Especially since most attacks she had at her disposal was rendered useless.

From her secure position outside of the heat of the fight, Errin had noted a highly distressing fact about the enemy they were dealing with: they were immune to any kind of physical damage. King's attacks with his Spirit Spear had been as ineffective as Diane's earth-based parries, including her strengthened punch to the Colossai's midsection. Even Diane's attempts at overtaking the Colossai and Errin's usage of her magical ability to further immobilize the enemy had been short-lived. And without King's final magical attack, their efforts would have amounted to nothing more than a delay in the creature's path of destruction.

"Is there anything else you two know about the Colossai that can help us deal with them more efficiently?" Errin asked. "Beside the fact that physical combat against them is pointless."

King and Diane exchanged a short glance; they most certainly guarded information. Nothing out of the ordinary there, Errin was used to this behavior by now. But King went ahead and surprised her by giving her an answer. "It seems they are adaptive."

"That's right," Diane said. "The Colossai only started manipulating the earth after I used that ability. Same thing with the change in its surface structure."

Errin scolded herself for not picking up on that detail herself. But while her mind replayed the battle with this newfound knowledge, she became aware of another aspect of the Colossai's behavior that bothered her.

"It also focused its attacks on specific targets," she mused. "At first, it only concentrated its efforts on you, King, regardless of the threat Diane posed to its survival. But the only thing it seemed to hate more than you was me. It more or less ignored all voice of reason to wipe me from the face of this earth." The question remained, what compelled the Colossai to take such actions in the first place.

"It's because the Colossai were created by Giants before the Holy War," Diane said and lowered her gaze. "It didn't see me as an adversary. All it wanted was to destroy the enemies it had been indoctrinated to hate before it was sealed, everyone who threatened the rule of Giants. In this case, Fairies and humans."

So this was the crux of the story. Giants had created these monstrosities in an effort to secure their position of power and execute every non-Giant soul in sight. Diane gave Errin a pained, apologetic look, as if she believed to be at personal fault. She had no reason to.

Errin harbored no grudge against the Colossai, unlike the lies they had told the Sins might have suggested. No family member of hers had been killed during the Fall – not that there had been all that many left to begin with. And as tempting as the idea to blame the Colossai for Mordred's corruption sounded, these dull creatures had no stake in helping him reclaim his birthright. Even without her indifference towards the Colossai as a species, blaming Diane for their actions would have been pointless and childish.

"It might be best if we return to the others," King said after watching the exchange of looks for a while. His eyes trailed southwards to where the rest of the group explored the area. "They need to know about what we've found out regarding the Colossai's attack habits."

It was a sound strategy, one that Errin would agree with without hesitation if their return didn't force her to face Lancelot and Ivy so soon. Their antagonism, their spite, their determination to condemn every ounce of good in Mordred twisted her stomach and filled her with the same cold she had battled during her childhood years when no one had dared to come close and offer her gestures of friendship. Until she had become tired of trying and pushed the hands away before they could betray her. Mordred had been the exception.

For the longest time, he had been her anchor, the only source of stability she had known without a mother and a father whose every day had been filled with duties in service to the kingdom of Camelot. When Errin had injured herself during training or horse-riding, he had tended to her wounds; when she had cried over the loss of the old guard dog at the castle gates, he had comforted her with a story about how good souls will reincarnate. Despite how tormented by expectations he had been, Mordred had always stayed loyal and supportive.

The Knights of the Round Table and Errin's refusal to join its ranks had been the hatched that drove them apart. Errin wished nothing more than to change her decision. Maybe then she would have understood, could have altered the path that trapped him in a downward spiral of hatred and wrath.

If only she had stayed by his side.

Because speed had become their first priority, Errin was allowed to sit on Diane's shoulder for the way back; an offer she tried to decline, but her company turned a deaf ear to her protests.

It was less the fear of the uncommon that made her hesitant – she had been forced to spent the majority of the last days on Ivy's shoulders after all – than the thought of handing control to someone else. She resented the Time Crystal for the same reason, as it represented an object she neither understood nor could hope to use herself. Well, the way its dark magic had manipulated and overtaken Katrina did not help in its case either. But her banishment to Diane's shoulder did offer one convenient benefit besides the better view: the opportunity to concentrate without concerns about terrain. A crucial requirement when trying to evade the inevitable questions disguised as small talk.

"You know, Errin, I was wondering," Diane said, "the style of your armor is so reminiscent of what humans prefer to wear in Camelot, especially the golden shape of the breastplate. Have you ever been that far to the south?"

Damn it.

Errin had set aside this detail with the potential to ruin their ruse because there had always been more pressing matters at hand, and frankly she had disregarded her looks since those curious gazes in the capital of Liones. The casual clothing of the others was bound to raise less suspicion than someone in full armor, a fact she should not have overlooked.

"No, I've never been there. I suppose it's either a coincident or the blacksmith was inspired by the southern style when he made this," Errin said with the most surprised tone she could fake on the go. "What about you two? I know you've been there for the Holy War, but have you ever paid a visit to the capital in times of peace?" It seemed like a reasonable, harmless question to ask.

Diane snickered. "Just two months ago actually."

"For the wedding of King Arthur and his bride, Guinevere," King added and slowed his forward momentum to better partake in the conversation.

"The capital is still overflowing with construction workers, and the preparation work was complete chaos, but they really did their best to make it the most outstanding human wedding of the century," Diane said dreamily. "You should've seen it…."

"I didn't know the king of Camelot married. News only travels slowly to the north," Errin said. A straight lie.

She knew for a fact that Arthur's marriage fell right into the time frame she and her 'comrades' had chosen to combat the Colossai, but all she had heard about the event had been dusty stories lacking any detail, and she was curious. Unfortunately, her open interest didn't prompt further explanations.

"It was nice to see Arthur find someone he is willing to share his future with. They both seemed so happy…" King said, as lost in memories as Diane. "And I'm sure it will help strengthen the overall stability."

"Stability, huh? So that's what marriage is all about?" Diane asked with a playful tone, which prompted King to lose his train of thought. Only for the two of them to gleam at each other with unfiltered affection.

Errin hesitated to raise her voice and interrupt their moment of privacy. "I suppose you two are married as well then?"

"Something like that," Diane said. King's cheeks turned crimson with a mixture of fluster and embarrassment.

For the first time, Errin imagined to see a resemblance between King and the way Ivy used to overplay her own blushes, back when she had visited Camelot as a child. Mordred had complimented her looks out of a sense of chivalry, and Ivy's expression back then matched her father's round eyes and burning cheeks to a T.

"Let's maybe _not_ talk about any of that right now," King said, trying and failing to regain his composure.

"Oh no, let's," Diane insisted with a grin. "For example, we can talk about what awesome parents we will be!"

Errin choked thanks to the mine field Diane's statement had filled her path with. She hoped they would find something else to talk about. Or at least allow her to shut herself out of the discussion. If she spoke without care, she might spill the fact that King and Diane would become parents of four children in the not too distant future.

But her pleas were disregarded. "Wouldn't you agree, Errin?"

"I'm sure you'd make great parents," Errin said, surprised to be able to keep her voice firm.

"See? Told you!"

"Haven't we agreed not to rush things?" King countered miserably.

But the wide grin Diane showcased then was too infectious to be mad at. King's lips twisted into a mirror image of Diane's beam, and even Errin couldn't help but smile to herself at their behavior. As the high mountain ranges of Camlann passed her by, she wondered what could have compelled Mordred to commit such horrible crimes against them and their children.

* * *

«Focus» happened to gift Lance with an advantage in about any fight he had ever engaged in. Similar to the manipulation of time the Time Crystal offered Katrina, Lance used his magical ability to slow his perception of time to the point where he could see an action taking place with a fraction of the speed that movement ought to have. In short, «Focus» gave him additional time to react to attacks and think of a strategy to counter. And in the best-case scenario, Lance could _predict_ the moves of an opponent by focusing on the subtle tension of muscles that proceeded a chain of attacks. Without his magical ability, Lance would have been bested by Percival and his fellow Apprentice Holy Knights with painfully higher frequency.

To be fair, Colossai didn't have muscles to enable their movement and strategy appeared to be a foreign term to them, so their attack patterns remained unpredictable. But with heightened senses and reduced reaction time, Lance managed to avoid the bombardment of rocks they hurled at the Sins. Which was probably the only reason he was still standing.

The sudden appearance of the Colossai had thrown all of them off guard and triumphed as the primary reason for the strategic-less combat the Sins had showcased thus far. In an ideal world, their four players with an affinity for magic – Merlin, Gowther, Elizabeth, and Gaius – would have moved to different parts of the battlefield and pinned down the Colossai with a crossfire of magic attacks. Ivy could have further slowed the enemy movement by manipulating the earth around them, and if Ban slowed down for only _one second_, he would realize that using «Snatch» against the Colossai had a much higher probability of success then hitting them in the absence of tactic or reason.

But alas, this short-sightedness was what Lance had to work with, no matter how little he liked it.

The brute force of one of Ban's strikes made the first Colossai tumble, and stone met stone with an ear-deafening sound as it crashed against its fellow in second line. But Ban's attack turned into a short-lived victory when both Colossai straightened and ushered in a new wave of stone to bury Lance under. He rolled out of the way at the last second and gained a scratch on his arm as the skin scraped across the scree-covered ground. His cursed broken toes reminded him of the strain he had put them under with the past hours of hiking; his healing factor could at least _pretend_ to work on the injury. The illusory spell of one of Gowther's «Blackout Arrows» finally rendered the leading Colossai immovable, though not yet defeated.

Lance had little to offer to stop the relentless advancements of the enemy – the single magic spell he could muster allowed him to levitate a couple leaves for an astounding three seconds, and his strength could not compete with his father's on the best of days. But his disappointing performance left him more time to assess the situation at hand.

"Ivy, heads up!" Thanks to Lance's warning, Ivy evaded the fist of a Colossai at the last second. A crater remained where she had been standing a mere second ago. They exchanged worried looks across the battlefield before Ivy refocused on keeping herself alive through the thunderstorm of rocks and dust.

Meliodas, meanwhile, stood at the sideline to avoid a fight as much as possible, fists clenched, but unwilling to take action.

Lance respected Meliodas and thought of him as great, caring father to Katrina, but an undeniable aura of mystery surrounded him. Like everyone else born after the New Holy War, Lance had been told stories about the great Demon Meliodas, who had been so powerful he had ended the war by defeating the Demon King. A man of legendary status.

But Lance had to admit, he had never seen signs of to validate these legends, despite how often he had visited Katrina and her parents in Liones. Ban thought of the Captain as the best man to grace the earth, but Lance had stopped valuing his father's every word in gold some time ago. In fact, The Fall marked the only instance where Lance had seen Meliodas use his powers, the black dome bound to possess the same destructive potential as the darkness Katrina emitted whenever she used the Time Crystal.

In any case, Meliodas reluctance to partake in battle seemed to only fuel the Colossai's determination to get as near to him as possible. And one of them was damn close to reach their goal, with no one left to stop it. Ivy remained reluctant to intervene out of fear of exposing her magical ability and heritage, Escanor had no chance without «Sunshine», and heaven knew where Gaius had disappeared to.

Lance was the only one willing and able to act.

His sharpened vision followed the nearest Colossai as it crept towards Meliodas, hand outstretched and ready to crush his spine. And as Meliodas raised one arm in preparation of a desperate strike, when his pupils darkened to two lifeless pieces of coal, Lance did exactly what he was _not_ supposed to do and charged. His window of time shrunk to a chink with alarming speed as he ran headfirst towards the Colossai while avoiding the slowly tumbling rocks that rained onto the battlefield like oversized hailstones. When he was so close to the towering beast that the hairs on his arm stood up from instinctual fear, Lance leaped off the ground and hit his target at the ideal imbalance point, the shoulder.

Lance wasn't naive enough to believe that his hit alone had any kind of force behind it. Fairies were awfully weak by nature, and physical strength stood out as the one annoying aspect in which the Fairy side of his family shone through. But fortunately for him, speed enhanced the force of any given strike to the same degree as muscle power, and _that _he could offer in spades.

Knowing all this, Lance still cheered as the Colossai gave way under the hit and reeled to one side while he himself was propelled backwards by the counterforce. His arms screamed in protest due to the ruthless way they had been used against an obstacle made out of stone. But the discomfort did not prepare him for the overload of his pain receptors when he misjudged his momentum and failed the landing by putting all force on his ankle. The same one Lance had sprained earlier today.

His leg snapped and he fumbled with his balance to little avail.

Until a lack of balance became the least of his problems when the Colossai he had derailed a moment ago stood tall once more. Its featureless head turned towards Lance with one clear intent.

The stone fist dropped onto Lance with the inevitability of a meteor and with a hefty portion of the same force. He more dropped than rolled out of the way but to no use. His leg was crushed under the impact, and the bones shattered into a million fragments. In a desperate attempt to swallow the surging outcry, Lance bit his tongue as black dots exploded like fireworks in his periphery. Blood filled his mouth and drowned his sense of up and down. He fought for more air to pull into his lungs but only managed to spit out red clumps. Through the all-encompassing taste of iron, he noticed the pressure on his leg or what little was left of it; the Colossai was still pinning him down. Ready to finish him off, and for good this time.

But his demise was delayed by a miracle and a rumble in the earth. The weight on his leg lifted, and the Colossai dropped to the ground next to Lance, hit by a force he couldn't make out through his oxygen-deprived vision. It looked like a mountain had sprung to life to save him… what a silly though.

Then someone called his name, and Lance was lifted straight off the ground into a hug.

"You are the worst!" Ivy cried, but between her snuffles and the sound of blood rushing in his ears Lance could hardly hear her. "Shouldn't you know better than to jump towards your death, you idiot? Why can't you think things through for once?! Don't you dare pull that stunt again, you –"

"Thanks for the safe," Lance mumbled through the blood in his mouth.

"I thought you were DEAD!"

"You know me, I'm too much of an annoyance to die like that." If Lance's head hadn't been spinning from the taste of iron in his mouth and his advanced healing kicking into gears, he would have underpinned the snarky comment with a grin. But for the moment, he was happy to rely on Ivy to keep him upright and wait for his heartbeat to normalize.

The rest of the fight blurred to a chain of things happening at a rapid-fire pace in Lance's memory, a time he spent leaning against Ivy in a half-conscious delirium. Merlin, Gowther, and Elizabeth gnawed away the enemy's resilience to the point where Ban could take them down, one after the other. The Colossai remained as lifeless stone formations on the ground, a pile of mountain people waiting to be buried. By the time King, Diane and Errin returned from their detour, the threat was eliminated and the area devoid of enemies.

Ban gave the fallen Colossai in front of him a displeased glare. "Pretty nasty these things."

"They are immune to any type of physical attack, which makes them so difficult to take down," Meliodas said.

"We noticed the same thing," King said. "And the one we fought also adapted Diane's abilities after she used them."

"Strange," Merlin said and tapped her chin. "As far as I noticed, none of these Colossai have showcased any ability of that kind. Though they have used earth manipulation from the very beginning."

Speaking of earth manipulation, it was only a matter of time before someone mentioned the massive stone spikes Ivy had used to knock away the Colossai intent on crushing Lance. The display of her power towered amidst the battlefield, and Meliodas should have been around to witness their creation. He had been eying Ivy for a while, but so far, he had kept suspicions regarding her unexplained powers to himself. Control over the earth wasn't exactly a common ability within the human race; in fact, variants of «Creation» exclusively existed among members of the Giant Clan. All Meliodas needed to do was connect the dots and expose Ivy's identity. But Lance didn't have the energy for nervous sweating.

Errin interrupted the relative silence after Merlin's assessment. "Where are Katrina and Gaius?"

Lance loosened his grip around Ivy's shoulder to inspect his surroundings and almost dropped to the ground in the process. Errin was right. In addition to Katrina's disappearance into the seal, Gaius had vanished as well, with no trace left to tell where he could have gone to. With the limitless aid of teleportation, the answer was quite simply _anywhere_.

But before Lance or anyone else had the chance to answer Errin's question, a sound startled the group, a creaking and crunching from the fallen Colossai. And before their eyes, the stone to form their shapes cracked, rifts and fissures spread across the surface, until what had once been solid stone turned to rubble and dust. Humanoid outlines remained, not made out of rock but rather a soft layer with an eerie resemblance to human tissue.

Diane stumbled backwards as if hit by a punch, but if Lance had trusted his legs to hold him, he would have staggered away from these apparitions born out of the wombs of the Colossai twice as fast. This better be the result of a cranial trauma, an invention of his spinning head.

"This can't be…" Ivy whispered. Shier disbelief, shock, _horror _fought for dominance on her face.

But neither she nor any of the assembled people could deny the truth. The creatures they had been fighting weren't made out of dead stone. They had a core. A core that had once been very much alive.

* * *

A Giant. As the stone shell crumbled to dust, the form of a Giant that had been hidden within the Colossai revealed itself. This one was male but with a face too young to dawn war paint, hardly older than Ivy. And if the encapsulation into stone hadn't cost his life thousands of years ago, Katrina had killed him. With her own hands, she had snuffed out the light of life from this boy's eyes.

She had taken a life. Unintentionally and in a desperate move of self-defense, but these excuses didn't mend her crime. If she had suppressed her powers, if she had been strong enough to fight the persuasion that had pulled her into the seal, he would still be alive.

Horror swept over Katrina in never-ending waves, as her mind tried to process the flood of implications this reveal opened the door to. Mordred hadn't used a mindless, faceless army when he had invaded Liones and murdered the Sins and many more of civilians. He had manipulated _living beings_ to serve his will. To a group of people who had known nothing but the confines of their prison for millennia, the dark man with the behavior of a king had to have seemed like their salvation, the one to grant them freedom from their cage. And what did this mean for those who created the Colossai? Had fellow Giants subjugated members of their clan to fight on their behalf or had the boy in front of Katrina traded his free will for a chance to better protect his people? His empty eyes gave no answer.

Enslaved only to be caged for three thousand years.

Katrina's thoughts were running haywire, and all attempts to calm herself through mechanical breaths fizzled out and came to nothing. Dead. Murdered by her, by this supposed divine power with the same desire to destruct as the Demon side she had struggled half her life to defeat and starve to death.

She couldn't bear to look at the Giant boy's face, almost peaceful in death with the faint shadows of pain carved into his features, and yet she was unable to avert her gaze and escape the pull of these lifeless, brown eyes. Her reflection trembled within them.

What did this mean for their goal? Sealing an army of heartless monsters to prevent the death of their families seemed like a small price to pay back when they had agreed to alter the stream of time. But the end couldn't justify the means, not this time, and Katrina's resolution to carry out their plan dissolved in mist and betrayed beliefs. How could she continue if she had to condemn these Giants to an eternity of imprisonment?

Her conscience mocked her a fool. Instead of the Colossai, their original plan had seen her and her friends face Mordred himself. And to believe this confrontation would not have concluded with his death, to believe everything could return to how it used to be was a fool's hope. By continuing on their path, Katrina had long accepted murder as a necessity if it allowed her to reunite with her parents. Justifiable motives. Maybe Mordred believed to have them too, a higher cause to strive towards so that he would sleep the night after he cut the throats of children, to protect himself from being haunted by these lifeless, brown eyes.

While the sea of her guilt crashed above her head to drown her in its rage, Katrina held on to the Time Crystal like a lifeline. Merlin had warned her of its dangers, and she knew its magic would bring the darkness she feared so much. But this small, unremarkable device in her hand could prevent the murder she had committed. The spell wouldn't free her from the guilt, but it would purge a part of her sin and bring the Giant back to life.

It was the least she could do to atone.

"Katrina, please, do not use the crystal. It does not warrant the pain you will inflict upon yourself. You promised me to stop using its magic, do you remember?" For as collected as these words were, the voice to accompany them sounded almost as desperate as she felt.

Behind the veil of tears, Katrina saw Gaius kneeling in front of her, his blue eyes dark from worry, one hand outstretched towards her. His presence failed to pull her focus away from the display of her unforgivable deeds for long. Katrina shook her head with weak, overly emotional conviction.

"I can't take it!" The image of Gaius was distorted from the tears that filled her vision. She wondered if this apparition was him at all or a mere product of her mental stability breaking past the point of repair. "I can't take it, going on like this! I can't move on when it means taking lives without a second thought. I don't want to become like him, I can't…" Her voice broke, the words she intended to throw at Gaius died in her throat.

With a gentleness Katrina hadn't expect him to possess, he took a hold of her wrist and pried open her loose grip around the Time Crystal to let the item drop into his palm.

"If words will help you understand, please know that the guilt you feel is the sign that you do not take lives without a second thought. You intend to risk your own well-being for the sake of someone you neither know nor have thought to be alive. In this you differ from the unmoral individuals you are afraid to join. Because you mourn, because you want to change what has happened, you are better than all of them. But please… I cannot stand by while you hurt yourself."

Katrina looked at Gaius with the awe of someone who saw the sun for the first time after years of blindness. Never before had she heard him speak about what he believed or allude to what he _felt_. He had always acted distant, the next experiment or discovery on his mind rather than the outside world, craving knowledge instead of connection. And now this.

He believed her to be worth saving. Despite the murder she committed, he didn't show disgust or loathing. The well of tears dried out. And when Gaius climbed to his feet, afraid to break the eye contact between them, and extended a hand to help her, Katrina accepted. Her legs buckled as her eyes caught the lifeless form of the Giant. She felt nauseous, weak. But the loose grip with which Gaius secured her hand made everything better, and with his help, she traced her steps back to the rift.

"Did you come here just for me?"

"I did." Gaius paused to shoot an anxious look at the cluster of stone-still Colossai, chalk white statues in the pale light. "When I left, the others were attacked by Colossai, presumably drawn toward the collection of powerful entities invading their habitat. The chaos presented itself as the ideal opportunity to –"

"You mean there are more Colossai out there? And they're fighting mom and Merlin?" Katrina asked. Of course she worried about her mother, but none of them knew the truth about the Colossai, they had no reason to hold back against the supposed enemy. They might kill so many more…

"Actually, both Meliodas and Ban have returned with –" Gaius began, but Katrina had no time to listen and ran towards the rift while dragging Gaius with her.

The hope to prevent more unnecessary deaths had burned the weakness in her legs and replaced it with a clear goal to reach. The Colossai ignored them when Gaius and Katrina drew closer to the rift and allowed them to step through the broken seal membrane without further delays. The passage through the Demon-crafted barrier unsettled Katrina even more than last time. An all-powerful force pulled her back against her will and tore at her flesh until she was certain to be skinned alive. The anguish rocked her body in waves that seemed to go on forever.

Then she broke free of the darkness and was blinded by the real sunlight on the other side. The hollow nature of the world inside the seal with its bland colors and still air vanished under the warmth of the sun like a bad dream. But the knowledge about what she had seen, what she had _done_ remained.

And once her eyes adjusted to the different light, her hopes fell silent. The Colossai – no, the _Giants_ – were dead, their true forms exposed for the gathered people to see. The tremor returned to her legs, but she had nothing, no strength, no hope left to prevent its control over her muscles. All eyes were magnetized by the five dead Giants, and no one had noticed Gaius' and Katrina's arrival; the shouts continued to echo through the valley.

"You knew about this?! Are you telling me you knew about this and DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING?!" Diane yelled, fists clenched at her side.

Katrina had no idea who the accusations were levelled against, but to her surprise, her dad answered. "All I knew was that the Colossai were a weapon created by the Giant Clan, one that the Demon King feared. They stood in the way of his plans for the Holy War, so he entrusted me with eliminating the treat. And I was loyal enough to do just that. But I had no idea how they're created, that they were more than a lifeless tool. Still, shouldn't have left any of you in the dark about this. You have every right to be mad at me." From where she stood, Katrina was unable to catch a good look of her father's expression, but based on his tone, he was sincere in his apology. Elizabeth placed a supportive hand on his shoulder.

"I assume this makes you the creator of this seal, Captain?" Gowther asked.

"Yup. Guess I messed up the spell." The small smile Meliodas displayed was devoid of humor.

Her dad was the one who had imprisoned the Colossai; the realization hit Katrina like a gut punch. He was responsible for their centuries of suffering, and the flaws in the seal he had set up on behalf of his father had allowed Mordred to enact The Fall and kill hundreds of innocents. And yet, even though Meliodas had created the confinement Katrina had found so disgusting mere moments ago, she couldn't blame her dad for what he had done. Not when he was the one most haunted by his actions.

"As awfully as these Giants have been abused and misused," Elizabeth said, "we can't forget that they are still a threat to the people of Camlann. They have killed humans, and they will cause more harm if we don't stop them. I can't step aside when all these people are in danger. Maybe the Giants prefer an end to their suffering rather than what they are forced to be now…"

Motivated by Elizabeth's words, a few gazes trailed towards the core of their dilemma: the destroyed seal hanging in the air like an ominous warning. And in the process, the group at last took notice of Gaius and Katrina.

"Are you two alright?" Elizabeth asked after she reached them. She looked as though she wanted to embrace them, arms outstretched halfway before thinking better of herself. "You suddenly disappeared. We were worried about you."

Despite how worn out and helpless she felt, Katrina dispelled Elizabeth's worries with a small nod. A sigh of relief passed through the group. Lance clawed one hand into Ivy's shoulder to stand upright, and his eyes were glassy from blood loss, but his face still lit up when Katrina confirmed to be uninjured. Before she could ask what had happened to him, she was bombarded with a plethora of questions. But because all of them were thrown at her at the same time she never understood more than a few words before a new voice added their concerns.

'How did you get back?' seemed to be the most prominent question, and Gaius responded for both of them. "I followed Katrina into the seal in the instance I realized the danger of the appearing Colossai. Once I found her there, we were able to traverse the barrier together by capitalizing on its weakened state. Though admittedly, it did not give us free easily."

"Man, does this kid ever talk without sounding like a book?" Ban said in a low voice, which earned him an annoyed glare from King.

"Did you come across any additional Colossai?" Merlin asked. She had been eyeing Katrina and Gaius for a while, in search of a mystery or a muddle she couldn't quite put her finger on. Merlin knew about Katina's heritage, so Katrina's ability to escape the Demon magic of the seal offered little to surprise her. Could Gaius then be the cause for the strange look on her face?

"Around a dozen. However, they merely displayed pacifist tendencies."

"It makes sense when they don't have any command to follow," King said with a careful look in Diane's direction. "Now that I think about it, the one Colossai we fought didn't even attack us until it felt threatened."

"So, what's the plan then?" Ban asked. "Knowing this stuff's great and all, but it doesn't solve the problem of a bunch of killing machines roaming this place."

"They're not killing machines!" Diane growled before sadness invaded her voice. "They were forced into this against their will. No Giant would ever agree to become a weapon like this…"

"Regardless of the circumstances that turned them into what they are now, Ban is quite right to remind us of the danger their existence creates," Merlin said. Her eyes trailed over Ivy and the injured Lance and briefly crossed Gaius, before resting on Katrina. "There is no way of telling what consequences their presence may have in the future. But we have to reach an agreement on a plan going forward. Captain, your call?"

Meliodas fought with himself, as he looked back and forth between his friends and the dead Giants. The crows circled in the sky above and cawed to spread the word about the blood that had been spilled on the battlefield. Meliodas never allowed eye contact for long, afraid of the judgement he might be faced with.

His gaze at last came to rest on Elizabeth, and whatever encouragement he found there, it enabled him to resume speaking. "I'm the one who's at least in part responsible for their suffering and the deaths they caused here. I'll be the one to put an end to it. If I must, by killing them."

* * *

**(A/N)** The Colossai are in fact Giants - who called this twist beforehand? I dropped a few hints in previous chapters, for example the abilities the Colossai displayed in the fight with Errin, King, and Diane. The tower Ivy and her group came across in the last chapter was also destroyed by a Colossai rather than a normal Giant. And with Meliodas revealing himself to be the creator of the seal, we already have another twist at our hands. I have a couple more surprises, but they will most likely wait until the immediate threat the Colossai represent is dealt with.

I hope I can deliver the next chapter a bit faster, other projects demanded too much of my time recently. Thank you so much for reading!


	12. Regrets

Gaius required the better part of the day and a significant number of evening hours to shake the illusion of weight the seal had placed on his lungs. He had dealt with similar experiences before, after all, he had studied a plethora of different objects and creatures with demonic origin under Merlin's watch, but the seal outclassed these past encounters in intensity and overwhelm by an almost absurd amount. The fine construct of dark magic housed a sort of _entity_ in its outer walls he could best compare to the Time Crystal and its self-awareness. Both reacted to magic users in their proximity, and both could alter their behavior in accordance.

The seal had been designed with one clear purpose: to contain any individual or object caught in its spell. Gaius' and Katrina's attempt to break free had demanded a cost from them, equivalent to the seal's remaining restraint on its prisoners. If the seal had been intact, they would have been unable to escape the confinement spell, not least since the spell had been set up by the son of the Demon King.

Overcoming another magic user's incantations was in essence comparable to a match of arm-wrestling. In order to push the hand of an opponent away and break the grip, one needed additional force that outmatched the force enacted against one's hand; otherwise the arm-wrestling resulted in a state of stasis. For a magic user, this condition meant loss in almost all cases since spells tended to outclass feeble humans in staying power in all but the rarest of occasions. In short, breaking a spell required more magical energy than the spellcaster had used. An intact seal created by Meliodas would have never allowed them to escape.

Still, the information that Meliodas had created the confinement spell opened the door to far more interesting speculations beyond its sheer force. Most notably Katrina's lack of self-control in close proximity to the seal.

Gaius had seen other people lose their willpower before, magical curses and abilities to turn individuals into puppets in the hands of others. The way Katrina had been lured towards the seal with the dull expression of those without free will matched these instances all too well. And while one might be tempted to ascribe her connection with the seal to her half-Demon heritage, Gaius found her father's relation to its magic a far more convincing reason that aligned well with the _entity_ he had felt when crossing the seal's boundaries. Enchanted objects and longevity spells such as the seal often had a unique note to them, almost like a signature that could be traced back to the spell-caster if one knew how to identify the patterns.

Gaius was in the middle of scribbling down notes about these fascinating reveals when Lancelot interrupted him. "You still with us, Gaius?" From the sound of it, he had posed the same or a similar question before.

Since Elizabeth had healed Lancelot's injuries even before his natural regeneration had taken effect, he was 'back to top condition' as he had put it. Despite his reassurances and the healthy color of his face, Ivy had kept a close eye on him ever since the group had moved their base of operations to an overhang in the cliffs near the seal. Gaius found her worry rather arbitrary but refrained from discussing the matter. Ivy's temper intimidated him. And the way her narrowed eyes darted between Lance and Gaius only aided his unease.

"Is there something the matter?" Gaius asked before resuming to write down his theory about the relation of a spell's personality to its creator. He had deemed Lancelot's and Ivy's conversation uninteresting, but for the sake of courtesy, he offered them half of his attention.

"Yeah, I've been trying to ask you what happened to you and Katrina inside of this seal three times already. We have to work on your focus, pal. But that'll have to wait until we've tackled the issue with Katrina. Something must've really messed her up with how she's been acting."

Katrina sat at a distance from the others and stared into the landscape ahead, her back turned to them in what appeared to be an attempt at avoiding conversation –a desirable goal if Gaius had been asked.

"Katrina already seemed emotionally destabilized when I reached her within the seal, which is why I am unable to confirm any suspicions," Gaius said. Since Katrina had shown no intent to discuss the dead Colossai she troubled herself over with Lance, Gaius would not reveal any details either.

Lancelot raised an eyebrow in a motion of doubt when Ivy voiced a question of her own. "But you took the crystal from her, isn't that right? She hasn't let go of that thing since Camelot, but she gave it to you…"

Gaius picked the Time Crystal from next to his notebook where he had placed it. He still felt shaken by his experience with the seal, but there was more to his willingness to avoid contact with the object as much as possible. The aura of the crystal radiated stronger than he remembered, the polished surface pulsated with newfound energy that painted ever-shifting shadows on its faces. Fear of the unknown was an impractical quality for someone wishing to obtain knowledge, but something about the depths of these shadows both lured Gaius and disturbed him to the core.

"From what I was able to observe, she intended to use the Time Crystal. I merely prevented that from happening." The answer was vague enough to deflect further suspicion towards Katrina's motive.

"So you know what it does to her," Lancelot said.

"I know that the crystal possesses a self-aware presence with its own intentions that it hopes to fulfill. It is an object that feeds on magical energy, and the greater the potential of its wielder, the greater the energy it can obtain. It should not be used without absolute necessity. The consequences might be destructive."

"We've noticed," Ivy said.

"Okay, but that means you shouldn't carry it around either," Lancelot assessed. "You're our magic expert, and if anyone has lots of magic to feast on, it would be you."

His words held some truth. Gaius might not be as vulnerable to the dark forces of the Time Crystal as Katrina due to her inexperience with her powers, but that did by no means protect him from its persuasions. And still, he found himself unable to hand over Merlin's magical item to someone with lesser susceptibility to its pull such as Lancelot. Not when these depths contained so many unsolved mysteries. Not when it represented the last tie…

"I hope you don't mean to take that thing yourself," Ivy said and gave her cousin a glare that allowed no discussion. "You've seen what it's capable of – but knowing you, you'll just ignore the warning signs. You're idiotic enough to always put yourself to the front line. And then you end up a walking ruin for others to pick up the pieces."

"I'm merely _strategizing _here! You're the one who almost blew our cover by using that totally obvious earth attack. It'd serve you just right if you were getting called out for it."

"I did it to save _your_ ass, remember?"

Satisfied with letting the two of them bicker, Gaius finished his notes and let the Time Crystal slide into his pockets alongside the notebook.

Ivy had indeed been lucky to escape questions after putting her magical abilities on display with such brashness, but with more pressing matters at hand, the Sins' lack of attention to this detail was hardly surprising.

After Meliodas had revealed his plan to eliminate the threat the Colossai, his fellow comrades had affirmed their willingness to assist him in the matter, though some had spoken with more vigor than others. And while Merlin and Escanor had agreed to stay behind to watch over the supposed Camlann refugees, the rest had split in two groups to find and neutralize the remaining Colossai. As Meliodas had confirmed, he had imprisoned over two dozen of them in the seal.

Gaius had been unsurprised when Errin had insisted on venturing out with one of the search units, and since he had seen no non-violent way to convince her otherwise, Meliodas had at last given in to her resolve.

To assign Merlin – who viewed the primitive carvings of red and ochre paint on the rock beneath the overhang in an effort to look and listen the other way – as the final line of defense for the children put in the Sins' protection was a sound decision for two reasons. Those being «Perfect Cube» and «Infinity».

The first part of the equation was simple enough. «Perfect Cube» represented the ideal barrier as its walls could not be overcome with brute force alone and were impenetrable to most magic spells. However, almost all defensive shields that did not manifest out of a magical ability, including the improved version of the shield spell _lokshi kora_, required a constant supply of magical energy to maintain. «Infinity» neglected this problem and only necessitated the initial cost for setting up the spell without additional duration expenses, making it the ideal magical ability for Merlin to conjure «Perfect Cube» with.

Anyone remotely motivated to cast spells could only dream of this advantage.

As Gaius was envisioning the plentiful advances «Infinity» would have for his own mastery of spell work – not that there was any reason in dwelling on the unobtainable – he found himself in the presence of Escanor who had sat down next to him in what revealed itself to be the opening of another conversation.

"What you did today was very brave. You went after the girl without concerns for your own well-being," Escanor said, but the praise lost most of its intended impact due to his reluctance to look at Gaius. His fingers fidgeted, a common habit among people to express their nervousness – Gaius did not used these customs, so he could only tell from his observations of others.

"This course of action presented itself as the most reasonable," Gaius said, unsure how to respond.

He knew Escanor, much like the rest of the Seven Deadly Sins, on at least a surface level. And since Escanor had led the Holy Knights of Camelot as one of their most prestigious members, he had stopped by Merlin's laboratory on a regular basis, and not all of his visits had been founded on military related reasons. Back then, Gaius had avoided the knight with the same determination as he did other people. He had sat on the top step and listened to the two adults talk many times, wondering when Escanor would finally leave so that he could continue his studies downstairs. Escanor's physical presence and raw power had unsettled Gaius almost as much as the strange tension between him and Merlin. Without Escanor's grace «Sunshine», given to him by the archangel Mael, this wariness within Gaius had become irrational.

"But still, you've realized the dangers waiting inside the seal and… continued regardless," Escanor tried a second time. "I don't know many people who would risk their life like you did. Not least someone your age."

"It seemed to me as though I was obligated to aid her – that it was what I _had_ to do," Gaius said. While he contemplated about his intentions, he realized he had not been motivated by reason, not even curiosity about the inside of the seal. A force far more convincing had pushed him forward. Yet he was unable to identify that force. "Did the same urge compel you to become a knight?"

Saddened, Escanor shook his head. "I'm afraid my intentions were not nearly as noble. All I did was follow the people who met me with kindness. I only overcame this selfish pull at the very end when I was given the chance to prove to myself how far I would go for them."

"And yet you have refused to use your magical ability to help them against the Colossai." Even as a Holy Knight of Camelot, Escanor had relied on «Sunshine» with reduced frequency compared to his days as a member of the Seven Deadly Sins. This decision struck Gaius as rather odd.

"I hope you don't think less of me because of this. Although a coward's life would fit me quite right." Escanor presented a flimsy smile. "It's just that I am so grateful to have been given a second chance, to be able to spend my days with my comrades. I don't want to take risks and throw the life away I still have. Letting go is easy. But I like to think that holding on pays off at some point."

Gaius blinked while trying to make sense of Escanor's words. "So you continue to fight because you bind yourself to the possibility that you might be able to protect others and atone for selfish actions you have taken in the past?"

"Others might call this a silly reason," Escanor said, "but you followed your friend into the seal to protect her. In that moment, you must have felt a similar wish within you."

"I merely did what I deemed right."

"That's what makes your actions heroic, isn't it?" For the first time, Escanor looked at Gaius to gift him with a true smile.

'Heroic' was not a term Gaius liked to toss around easily, not when its literal definition fit such a small number of people. To hear Escanor, one of the Seven Deadly Sins who were ingrained into the minds of the common folk as _actual_ heroes, use the word 'heroic' in reference to an act Gaius had performed on instinct was strange. It was undeserved.

Long after Escanor had returned to Merlin, and long after Ivy's and Lancelot's arguing had dissolved into mutual silence, and the last remains of daylight disappeared behind the western mountain ridges, Gaius flicked through his book and wondered what meaning lay behind Escanor's words and which way he was supposed to feel about his praise.

* * *

Once Ban used «Snatch» against the Colossai to rob the creature of its magic energy, it turned into a walking rock waiting to be crushed. In a futile attempt at landing a last strike against its sworn enemy, the Colossai rowed with its arms before the bright sphere of Elizabeth's «Ark» hit the creature square at its torso. The critical magic attack broke the spell fusing the stone shell with its core, and debris rained down on Ban as the Giant within the Colossai was revealed.

The Giant tumbled out of its confinement and left the shell an _immovable _rock waiting to be crushed. Without additional help, the carcass crashed to the ground, and a satisfying thump echoed from the nearby cliffs to carry the news of the defeated Colossai. That should do the trick and lure more of these pesky things. Their anger management needed a three-thousand-year overdo upgrade.

"What's our read?" Ban asked Elizabeth, who had gracefully landed next to the still Giant. Her wings hopped up and down as she inspected the body.

"Dead just like the last one," she confirmed Ban's suspicion with a grief-stricken look at the being whose life she had put an end to.

They had been trying every option that held the remote possibility to separate Giant and Colossai without killing the former but without use. No amount of stolen energy, worn-out physical attacks, or even Goddess-based «Purge» magic had worked in their favor. They only ended up killing the creatures.

"I can't ask this of you any longer," Meliodas said. His expression was grim and tired as he joined them next to the dead Giant. "Not when it's my past sin we're facing here."

"Typical of ya to say that. But we're still here, and so are the others. So why dontcha quit complaining?" Ban hit the back of Meliodas' head, but the anticipated retort never came.

"Meliodas, I've promised to stay with you whatever it takes and no matter what disaster this world may present us next. I don't plan on changing my mind," Elizabeth said with wholehearted conviction. Her words broke through the gloom, and Meliodas looked at her with the grateful expression of a puppy who had been praised by his favorite human. Love-struck for three millennia and no signs of change.

"Any other smart ideas we can try?" Ban asked as the silence evolved into awkwardness.

The Captain shook his head. "It's nothing I've ever heard of before, combining a living being with a dead object. Even Merlin said she's at a loss here. Best thing we can do's keep trying."

"Definitely better than letting them roam 'round humans with no restrictions," Ban said and kicked a small piece of Colossai stone with his foot. "Didn't Ivy say her whole family got wiped already?"

A horrified look emerged on Elizabeth's face, and Ban wished he had kept that particular detail away from her. "That's awful! I had no idea the Colossai had already… that they have already taken lives. No one has given them any commands in three thousand years, yet they still…" She seemed unable to articulate the thoughts running through her head and then gave up with a sigh and a worried look towards where they assumed the closest human settlements to nestle south of the valley.

"To know that they're evil by default makes this job a whole lot easier," Ban said. The situation didn't call for humor, but with all these sour faces around, he preferred to keep at least his own comments lighthearted.

"We don't even know if they're acting against their will or not," Elizabeth stressed with more force than required. She sounded like Diane. Elizabeth noticed the similarity as well and lowered her voice. "Diane looked so broken when we found out…"

"No surprise there," Ban said. "Just another thing on a really long list of things she can't stand about her clan." From the staggered looks Elizabeth and the Captain threw his way, they hadn't expected him to provide this amount of insight.

Five years prior he would have shown disbelief as well. He and Diane had always gotten along well enough to maintain peace within the team – though she would never see past the time he stole her and King's powers during the Edinburgh mission. Their personalities and interests fell so far apart that they had been better off with a safety distance. But once things calmed down after the New Holy War, and they both moved into the Fairy King's Forest for the sake of their respected beloved, they had gotten a_ lot_ more time to get to know each other.

"It's difficult to believe that Giants were able to do such a horrible thing to their own people," Elizabeth said and shook her head in disbelief. "We owe it to them and Diane to at least try and free them from this synergy."

"Yeah, better we run into the Colossai than our B team," Ban said. Sure, Gowther would manage just fine, but Diane was in too deep emotionally and King was frankly too soft to fight an enemy and ignore their suffering. And with Merlin and Escanor demoted to babysitting, the odds had certainly looked better.

Ban, Meliodas, and Elizabeth had resumed to search the area for signs of magically buffed stone monsters when the next one quite literally ran into them; out of an old grudge or not, those things were drawn towards the Captain like flies by a piece of dead meat.

With a speed that betrayed its height and weight, the Colossai crashed into their group and raised one fist to bury Meliodas. He evaded the hit with minimal effort and jumped high to meet the Colossai head-on with a swift strike from Lostvayne. The physical attack yanked the creature's head backwards, but only bought the team half a second before the enemy reverted to fighting condition. Fists flew through the air as the Colossai tried to tear them to pieces, and the ground rumbled with each strike. Stone ground across stone whenever it moved its arms; Ban hated this sound.

The «Goddess Ember» Elizabeth summoned to trap the Colossai allowed Ban one calm breath before the confinement shattered into a thousand pieces as the Colossai first turned its outer shell into metal and then took a swing to break the prison. Ban stepped in before it could reach for Meliodas a second time and stole its energy. His body prickled under the surge of strength, and Ban allowed himself a grin. Left without the strength to support its fast-paced fighting style, the creature slowed. The Colossai roared and struggled against Ban's mental grip with more vehemence, and dust swirled as its feet dragged across the barren ground.

But Ban underestimated the enemy's determination. As the seconds ticked down, he needed more and more focus to maintain control over «Snatch», and before Elizabeth had a chance to use her magic against the rooted opponent, the stream of energy flowing into Ban's body snapped. The loss left him disoriented for a moment. A moment too long.

A rock hand swiped him from his feet with the force only a moving mountain could inflict. The impact cracked his ribs, and then his body protested again when he collided with a rock formation. Ban coughed, his lungs failed to draw enough air. He forced his muscles to tense beyond their limitations, and made a face when the alarm bells rang in his head to inform him of the overabundance of light bruises. While his body had developed an incredible durability during his time in Purgatory, the aching of his battered lungs reminded Ban that he was no longer immortal and had to keep the number of idiotic mistakes low. He was too old for heroic acts.

With a suppressed groan, he stumbled to his feet. But what he saw then froze the urge to jump back into action. Elizabeth had hit the ground a few feet away from him. She clutched her head in agony and disarray from what might be a developing concussion, and her wings had disappeared into nothingness. This left Meliodas as the last one standing, his small statue laughably fragile against the sixty feet tall Colossai towering over him.

Ban didn't need to see his best friend's expression to know his eyes were burning with anger and resolve. Even though – or exactly because – Meliodas had seen Elizabeth die over one hundred times, he lost all rationality whenever she was hurt or in danger. No matter what he needed to sacrifice, he would not watch her die another time.

"CAPTAIN!" Ban yelled. But too late.

Darkness swept over Meliodas' eyes as he tapped into his forbidden Demon powers. His presence grew, consumed the world around him, stiffened the air until Ban found no oxygen left to breathe. Every molecule, every thought, every ounce of energy was pulled towards the black hole Meliodas had opened, was consumed and devoured by a hunger that knew no end. The sphere of dark magic rising from Meliodas' chest was tiny, smaller than an open palm, but the magic within pulsated with a force great enough to make Ban sick. The black dot shot through the empty space towards the Colossai, and when it touched the metallic skin, the bottled energy exploded.

From one moment to the next, the Colossai was erased from existence, swallowed by the unnatural darkness of the Demon King's power. And the darkness continued to spread.

Ban reached Elizabeth as she extended an outward turned palm to meet the dome of dark magic. "«Goddess Ember»," she muttered, and light spread from her fingertips to shield both of them from the surging tidal wave.

Then the darkness swept over them, replaced the outside world with blackness. The divine barrier swayed like fabric in a storm as the demonic forces roared with a hundred throats screaming for destruction and murder. The thin walls of «Goddess Ember» filled with hairline cracks that grew larger and spread wider.The flimsy magic could collapse any second. But by some miracle the shield outlasted the battery of demonic forces.

When Elizabeth dropped the barrier, the landscape beyond was a burnt ruin of its former self. The earth had been torn to unnatural cracks and craters, and the scorched grass in between turned to ashes as the wind plowed through. Shadows covered the rock formations like grotesque paintings. Meliodas stood amidst the destruction, and his arms hung to his side, as though he didn't have the strength to raise them ever again. Horror had carved deep lines into his face.

This was the exact reason why Meliodas had sworn to never make use of his Demon powers. After defeating the Demon King twice in the last days of the Holy War, he had obtained so much of his father's powers that his presence alone had messed up entire ecosystems. Merlin had argued the mortal plain couldn't withstand such powerful forces radiating from a single individual. Meliodas had been left with a choice: to either leave Britannia for eternity or seal his powers within himself to prevent them from reaching out. But by sealing his inherited magic, Meliodas had traded control for safety. And whenever he lost his composure or was forced to call forth that dark, powerful part of himself, the consequences bared disaster.

"At least now we know that Demon powers don't help either," Ban joked without humor. Truth be told, he had no idea what else to say.

"I didn't know it would be this bad," Meliodas said. His eyes trailed over the singed surroundings, as if exposure to the destruction counted as a form of atonement. "Against Zeldris I was at least able to confine the damage, but this? I didn't even mean to kill it…"

"Next time you just stay in the background, and I won't get myself knocked down," Ban said. Elizabeth, still a little unstable on her feet, walked over to Meliodas and took his hand in silent support.

No one wanted to mention how easily Meliodas could have gotten them killed.

* * *

Once Ivy had recovered from the terror of Lance being crushed before her eyes thanks to a short but uneventful night of sleep, she could resume to scowl at him for being an incorrigible idiot. Not only had he put his life on the line in a fight he knew outclassed his skill, but he continued as if nothing ever happened. The near-death experience had wandered off far into the back of his mind, and if he deemed it necessary, he would repeat the imprudence. To make matters worse, after he had taken a walk to inspect the area around the makeshift camp, he had set up a _chess match_ of all things with Gaius. Lance had always found joy out of those awful tactical games Ivy failed to wrap her head around, but this was a new level of ignorance.

The couple of lines Gaius had carved into the dirt with a little magic assistance, could only pose for a chessboard with both eyes squinted, but the boys cowered at opposing ends of their battlefield like war tacticians all the same.

"All this waiting is about to drive me insane," Ivy said while spinning her bracelet around her wrist in an endless loop. "Especially in this form."

She had been forced to stay in her human form before, and had done so willingly when she had paid visits to human residences in Liones or Camelot, but the uncertainty regarding the length of her imprisonment in a smaller body gnawed at her patience.

"I figured," Lance said. He tapped a field on the chessboard, and with a mere thought, Gaius moved the symbol of one of Lance's pawns forward to where even Ivy could see it was unprotected from Gaius' knight. As expected, Gaius used his turn to replace the lighter symbol with the darker one of his own figurines.

"So, you'll just continue to do nothing? That's your great strategy?"

Lance moved his queen out of the range of Gaius' knight. "Pretty much. Every time we've tried being strategic with this, we failed. When we tried to get to Merlin, we almost got wiped by Nashtar, and when we tried to avoid our parents, we ran into them anyway. Sensing a pattern?"

"Okay, fine, our luck's been terrible lately," Ivy admitted and watched as Gaius sent his knight deeper into enemy territories. "But we've agreed to work towards preventing The Fall, even without help. And all we've done so far is find out Mordred manipulated a group of enslaved Giants to support him."

"An absolutely fascinating reveal," Gaius said lovingly. "For the mind of a living being to serve as an object's fundamental source of movement and abstract thinking that the Colossai's fighting style suggests… all records I have found on the matter only hint at failed attempts. But by creating a collective network strong enough to support an individual creature in its decision-making process, the Giants of old have managed to avoid failures expected from a single mortal intellect."

Lance and Ivy answered with a unanimous groan. Leave it to Gaius to find delight in such a horrible act.

A few beats of silence passed as Lance assessed his next move before he placed one of his castles onto the space Gaius' knight had previously guarded. The figure now had full control over the left wing of the board. "Wait, what was that about a collective?" he probed while awaiting Gaius' next turn. Ivy couldn't believe he was encouraging Gaius to chew out more complicated explanations.

"I thought it was obvious." Hesitantly, Gaius moved his king further out of reach of Lance's castle. "They serve a single command, in this case the instructions from their creators to act hostile in presence of Demons. When Mordred gained control over them, he was in no way required to convince them. He merely made use of their collective mindset and gave them a new order to follow. By instructing one of them, he instructed all of them."

"Gaius, you are a genius," Lance said with grin, "but your queen is mine to take."

He was right. By moving his king away from the imminent danger, Gaius had exposed his queen to the long reach of Lance's castle. And said assassinator stood unthreatened and with backup in the form of Lance's remaining pawns at the center of the board.

Lance's grin vanished for a second as he thought about what Gaius words could further imply. Then the smile reappeared, this time filled with delight far stronger than his part victory in the chess game justified. "This is actually super useful input. And it works ideally with your wish to quit sitting around, Ivy!"

Ivy had no idea what Lance might be alluding to, but she knew him long enough to not question his sanity. Not yet. The chess match forgotten, Lance jumped to his feet and made his way to where Merlin stood watch.

"Uhm, Merlin, since you are already so knowledgeable about _time magic_, would you mind pretending to pay no attention for the next couple of minutes?" he asked. The stupid grin shone on his face.

Merlin raised an eyebrow before reciprocating Lance's grin with a small one of her own. "I just realized, I forgot something very important in Liones. I won't be gone for long, so I'm sure you four won't cause any major disturbances. You've proven your ability to handle matters on your own. Escanor? You wouldn't mind helping me out with this, would you?"

"W-what?" Escanor stammered. He seemed as confused as Ivy felt.

Merlin didn't bother to wait for an answer, as she gave Lance a knowing nod and snapped her fingers. Briefly engulfed in the light of teleportation magic, Merlin and Escanor disappeared into thin air. What remained was a pile of questions Ivy needed to dug her way through.

"What was that all about?" she asked. Lance denied her an answer and instead turned to where Katrina was staring into the valley. She kept her head low and her gaze unfocused, her arms wrapped around her knees.

"All part of the plan," Lance said before Ivy's grim stare prompted him to explain. "I thought since Merlin already knows that we come from a different point in time and likes to remind everyone how dangerous knowledge about the future can be, she'd be motivated to stay in the dark about our abilities as much as possible."

None of this helped to settle Ivy's confusion. But whenever Lance had a plan, it was best to refrain from disturbing his mania. He shook Katrina's shoulder with a gentle hand. "Katrina, could you do me a favor and freak out? Like demonically freak out?"

"Why would you want that?" Katrina asked. Her voice sounded hollow. The time she had spent inside the seal had left its marks, marks that might last until she would be safe in the arms of her parents and could move on from the darkness she had encountered on this journey. She should have stayed back with Elaine.

Ivy was about to prevent Lance from pushing her any further when he dropped a figurative bomb amidst them. "Because I need you to attract a Colossai in order for this to work."

His words sounded so far from reason that Ivy couldn't help but lash out against him. "Are you out of your mind?! Or did that hit from the Colossai cost you all your sanity? We don't stand a chance against these things, as your stunt yesterday attests."

"Think about it, Ivy," Lance began, not the least bit thrown off-balance by her outburst. "It's just like Gaius said, the Colossai share an information network. Like a colony of insects. We only need to instruct one of them in order to control all of them."

Slowly, the plan behind Lance's words dawned on her. And Ivy hated where this path led.

"Oh no, you don't," she said. She needed to fight the urge to shake the idiocy out of him. "This is a terrible plan, and you should know better than putting Katrina in this much danger. She isn't one of your pawns you can sacrifice if it helps you win the game!"

"She won't be in any danger if you manage to communicate with the Colossai. I assure you: it won't show any hostility towards you. And in the worst case, Gaius can teleport us a couple miles away. This will work. Trust me."

Based on Gaius forcefully composed expression that could almost be described as a grimace, Ivy doubted he had as much faith in his ability to get them out of danger as Lance did. With a helpless sigh at Lance's expectant expression, Ivy gave in and used her «Shrinking Bracelet» to grow into her normal shape and size. And while she had complained about the limitations of her human body, and the clearer air of higher up did fill her with glee, she was nonetheless wary in the prospect of a confrontation with a Colossai.

Katrina however, made no move to obey Lance's request. Her hands trembled in her lab no matter how fiercely she wanted to make them stop. "Please don't ask this of me."

Katrina's dread robbed Lance of a good amount of his enthusiasm, but he refused to give up. "If I knew of another option, I wouldn't ask. But you're the only one who has the Demon powers to get the Colossai's attention. Unless Gaius is able to mimic that magic…?"

"I cannot. It is a feat far outside the capabilities of any non-Demon."

"See? We're all counting on you. And we'll be here to protect you," Lance said.

But Katrina only looked more hopeless than before. "I'm not worried about myself. I'm scared because the powers I have are evil. I can't control them. I can't even suppress them. Every time I'm forced to use either Demon or Goddess magic, I end up hurting those around me. I… kill those around me." Katrina was unable to face them for longer, and her gaze became empty and lifeless, brought down by the weight of experiences no one her age should have been faced with.

"You would never be able to kill anyone," Ivy said. She shoved Lance aside and placed her index finger against Katrina's cheek. The skin felt cold from the biting winds.

"But I did," Katrina mumbled as she avoided Ivy's gaze and touch. Almost too pained to perform that simple motion, Katrina's tiny hand shoved Ivy's finger away. "Inside the seal. The Giant is gone. He is dead. Because of me."

More out of reflex than actual intent, Ivy pulled back. The hurt in Katrina's eyes deepened. Ivy had to remind herself that she had never met these Giants, nor did she cherish strong bonds with her mother's clan in the first place. Giants killed, longed for battle and conflict, gardened their stubbornness even now that the Holy War was over; the Colossai were the same. Ivy had no reason to felt hurt by the actions of self-defense Katrina had taken before anyone of them had known the Colossai were more than what they made out to be. And still, for one moment of weakness, Ivy was afraid. Afraid of the demonic fire slumbering within Katrina, which had scarred Cynthia and which Ivy had imagined to burn at her fingertips. For one moment.

"You had no idea it was a Giant," Lance said, his voice calm amidst the storming emotions of Katrina and Ivy. "You're not at fault, Katrina. These Giants were trapped in a seal for three thousand years. Maybe they are grateful to be put out of their misery."

For as soothing as Lance's compassionate offering sounded, it wasn't enough. "Don't you understand?! I'M A MURDERER! And I can't make it stop!" Katrina choked on her unshed tears. "I… I don't want to be like this."

Shadows crawled across Katrina's cheeks and filled her irises, no longer held at bay by the walls she had built to protect herself; Lance had been granted the surge of Demon powers his plan required.

And for as much as Ivy wanted to sort things out with Katrina, the sound of heavy steps suffocated all other thoughts. The current of the earth fell out of its natural state, as the feet of the nearing Colossai disturbed its movement. Movement that was supposed to be slow and lethargic, that required a millennium to move a mile, but was thrown into disarray as the Colossai born from the earth disobeyed its rules.

It was sickening.

When the Colossai came into view, Ivy awaited it with all the calm she could muster. Her fingers clawed around Gideon's hilt. Gaius had risen into the air beside her, hands outstretched and ready to cast a spell. Lance signaled both of them to wait for the Colossai to come closer until its massive frame blocked the sun and stole the light from the valley. Each of its steps resonated in Ivy's feet and knees.

Then the creature stopped, hesitant to hunt down the dwindling Demon presence. Or maybe the Giant within this shell waited for Ivy to make a move to verify her allegiance. She had no idea whether the Colossai could to identify her as only half-Giant, but the longer the creature looked down at her, the more she shrunk under the scrutiny of the face without features.

Finally, Lance gave the command she had been waiting for. "Gaius! Root this thing in place and get out of its field of vision!"

Gaius obliged and muttered a few words Ivy failed to catch. The ground under the Colossai's feet glowed with the orange light of Gaius' rooting spell, and as the Colossai became aware of the change in its environment and attempted to move, its feet betrayed its orders. The creature howled in frustration and reached for Gaius, who had dropped to the ground next to Lance and Katrina. As it failed to grab any of them, the sounds of struggle became louder, more aggressive.

"Ivy, your turn!" Lance shouted and used his lackluster upper-body strength to pull Katrina to her feet and shove her further away from the raging Colossai.

But Ivy had no idea how to even begin to communicate with the monstrosity in front of her. Words were lost on it, and every time she tried to reach it with the earth-controlling hands of «Life Force», she was met with unnatural, twisted cold, as though its surface was made out of ice rather than earth. The Colossai gave up judging Ivy and did all in its power to get a hold of Katrina, who was still tucked away in Lance's arms. A crunching sound radiated from where the creature's knees would have been as it almost broke its legs to bend forward further. Ivy shot Lance a panicked look, but he couldn't help her, all his focus rested on keeping Katrina and Gaius out of harm's way. He had no way of jumping to her aid, everything rested on her.

Every fiber of her being screamed for flight, but Ivy stepped forward, placed a hand on the Colossai's torso and _pushed_. Not with any form of physical strength but with her will and control over the earth. The ice wall that had shut her out shattered under her mental grip, and Ivy felt the comforting warmth of earth and stone under her palm, both physically and metaphysically. In an instance, the Colossai stopped moving. The sounds of battle subsided. Ivy released a shaky breath. Tiny roots spread from where Ivy had placed her hand and covered the Colossai's torso, splitting the stone itself. Ivy pulled away and marveled at the signs of life born out of the dead rock. The first few tendrils were already growing buds with the promise of leaves.

"Whooho!" Lance cheered equal parts amazed and relieved. "I never thought this would actually work."

"Thanks for your endless faith," Ivy remarked dryly, but she was too dazzled by her success to be mad with him. "So, what you think our pet-Colossai should do for us?"

"If you could tell it to move towards the seal and wait there, that'd be great."

Ivy nodded and reached out to the Colossai with her mind once more. No barrier held her back this time, and instructing the creature to move forward with the seal as its only goal in mind, bared no more challenge than the pillars and spikes «Life Force» allowed her to create. As soon as Gaius dispelled his magic with a loud '_umaro_', the Colossai crept towards the seal.

"You think the other Colossai will get here too?" Ivy asked. Not to doubt Lance's deductive thinking, but the prospect made her rather uncomfortable. And the assembly would no doubt raise questions.

"No reason to be sceptic of Gaius' theory, so I'd say we got a good chance," Lance said with another trademark grin. "But you might wanna change back to human size before Merlin and Escanor get back here."

With a glare at Lance's direction, Ivy turned the stone of her bracelet clockwise to activate the item's sleeping magic. She wasn't thrilled to cage herself in the smaller body so soon in the slightest, but she didn't want to blow her cover either. She stretched her arms to adjust to the limitations.

Lance had meanwhile inspected Katrina for injuries and held her at arm's length for an earnest apology. "Sorry about pushing you so much, I should have realized you were hurting. I promise it won't happen again. Especially now that Gaius can use the Time Crystal to get us all home."

"If at all possible, I would prefer to avoid this particular scenario," Gaius said as he observed Lance and Katrina with apprehension. "We have so far no evidence to conclude how damaging the effects of the crystal might be."

"Way to ruin the mood," Lance said. "We've found a way to control the Colossai without one of us dying, and we even managed to keep our identity a secret from our parents, so the time stream should be just fine. We're, like, at the last few steps before going back home, back to our families. This is our moment to celebrate!"

Persuaded by his optimistic words, Ivy joined Lance in a celebratory high-five. Most likely he was right. With the Colossai dealt with, what other evil was there to fight anymore?

But despite wanting to give into the optimism, Ivy held up her guard. She still had something to do or rather to say. She had kept the story to herself for too long, and when she had believed to have lost Lance, all plans to remain distant had been crushed. He deserved the truth. Katrina and Gaius, and even Errin did as well.

Ivy was determined to tell them about everything she had seen during The Fall of Liones. No matter how much the bottled memories would hurt her.


	13. Ruins Past and Present

– The day of The Fall –

All of Lance's attempts at prying more information about Mordred from his father had amounted to nothing, and at this point, he was almost willing to let the topic rest. Almost. But since the way towards Liones' southern gates wouldn't last much longer, he better hurried.

"If you're all assembling because of some new developments regarding Mordred, it must be important," Lance said. He juggled with his father's attention and his mother's grip around his arm with lackluster results, and only avoided a collision with the single vendor climbing the street with a sideway stumble. If only he had Gaius' talent for multitasking.

"Look kid," Ban said, and Lance cringed because of the undying nickname. "This is adult stuff we're talking about and, quite frankly, none of ya business."

"The excuse of 'adult stuff' doesn't fly anymore," Lance remarked.

"Yes, it does," Elaine said and released Lance only to wrap her arms around his neck from behind. Since he had declared his wish to become a Holy Knight and had moved to Liones' capital, she had displayed an unnerving desire to cling to every piece of him she could get her hands on. "By Fairy standards you're still awfully young. Aren't you training too much? You've become so thin."

"Mom!"

"Can it, Elaine, he's always been this frail," Ban said with a cackle and a jab to Lance's shoulder with enough force to make him trip.

"Oh ha-ha, very funny. Now that I've provided the amusement act, could we get back to the topic at hand?"

"Sure, ya wan'ed to tell us how training's been going," Ban said with a lopsided grin. His determination to bend over backwards and block Lance's questions about Mordred was getting more infuriating by the minute.

After five months of separation, his parents were rightly curious about Lance's development in the lowest rank of Holy Knights, but he wasn't in the mood to dwell on his ongoing defeats in about every single duel he had had with Percival so far. He was getting better, sure, with both his swordsmanship and the usage of «Focus». But without any field practice he would never become as skilled as Percival with his claymore. As it stood, Ivy would still best him in a fight – without needing to train day in and day out.

"The usual," Lance answered. "I get kicked around a lot, and progress is as slow as ever. Now could we please get back to Mordred?"

"I hope you don't mean they treat you badly." Elaine ignored his question in favor of the zillionth inspection of Lance's face. Good thing the scratches from yesterday's training had long healed. "This entire Holy Knight thing was a bad idea from the start, but you wouldn't listen. Ban, I told you he's too weak to fight back, and this is the result!"

Lance was about to remind his mother that he was still present and could happily do without a bashing of his weak stature when Ban beat him to the case. "Nah, kid's gotta learn how to defend himself. And the harder the lecture, the better the outcome. Plus, he already has years' worth of experience from butting heads with Ivy. He'll be just fine."

Lance groaned. "Don't remind me. Percival is hellbent on setting up a duel with her, and he asked me to be their jury. Even in the best-case scenario, I'll _just _get verbally trashed by the two of them." Both Ivy and Percival liked to make fun of him and had the physical strength to keep him down; they would no doubt get along splendidly.

"Sounds like fun," Ban said. "I think I'm gonna watch next time you get challenged for a duel. Just don't expect me to cheer for you."

"I'd never be foolish enough to expect anything else."

The tall metal gates of Liones capital's southern entrance cast its shadow onto the trio, and Lance still had as many answers as when he had started his inquisition. Which is to say none. The matter had to be serious if Ban tiptoed around sensitive information with this much care. He usually preferred a break-things-and forget-about-consequences approach. Maybe Lance would have more success with pestering his father for answers once he would return from this super-secret conference with King Gilthunder and the other Sins. And until then, chances were Ivy had some additional information to share. At least one reason to look forward to an afternoon worth of waiting.

Elaine let go of Lance in order to place kiss on Ban's lips. "Be safe," Ban mumbled into Elaine's hair. If she gave him an answer, her words were too quiet for Lance to understand.

Then the two parted, and Elaine headed forward, out of the city-walls to where the Boar Hat sat on a hilltop, a short walk down the meandering sand trail between oat stems and summer grass.

Lance intended to follow her but was stopped by his father's voice. "Take care, kid." His words almost qualified as genuine parental care. At least if Lance hadn't known how ridiculous that sounded.

He answered with a half-hearted wave and stepped past a group of grim merchants on their way into the city. One of them threw Elaine, who floated a few feet ahead, an even dourer look, appalled by the presence of a Fairy this far south from the Fairy King's Forest. But grim-face refrained from causing a scene and joined the sparse traffic drippling through the gate. Considering the time of day, the crowd was unusually small. There were always travelers passing through the gates, whether they had Liones as their end goal or used the capital as a steppingstone on their way to the most distant corners of Britannia. Today however, the road leading towards the kingdom of Camelot and its neighbors lay deserted in the heat of the day. And the city streets had been likewise quiet.

His mother's voice pulled him out of his contemplation before Lance could draw conclusions. "He really does care. It's just that he isn't used to showing it to anyone," Elaine said as if she had picked Lance's previous thoughts right from his brain. Which, in all likelihood, she had.

"Mom, stop it with the heart reading, it's unfair," Lance said. Judging by Elaine's pouted lips, his guess had been spot-on. "You don't do it with dad either."

"That's because I don't need to." Elaine paused, reluctant to continue. "That's the other reason why I didn't want you to leave the forest. I felt like you were trying to distance yourself from us. I know you didn't always have it easy with us, but you almost act like you want to run away from us as soon as possible. And Ban… doesn't know how to handle the change."

Well, that was a reveal. Lance hadn't meant to push his parents away; his decision to become a Holy Knight had been born out of a desire to do something worth-while with his life. As the single individual born from a Fairy and a human, Lance had no clue as to how long his lifespan would end up being, and he had wanted to act sooner rather than later. He had a dream to push towards. And regrets to silence. Of course, he would keep these thoughts from his mother. She would only end up worried.

"That's ass, I only did it to get away from Ivy," Lance said, and thankfully the excuse sufficed in replacing Elaine's serious expression with a chuckle.

They made the rest of the way entangled in meaningless chatter about Ivy, Percival, and the improvements of Elaine's cooking skills she couldn't wait to show off to the others this evening. Before long, Lance knocked at the green wooden door of the Boar Hat, and waited for Katrina to answer. Something had upset her, evident by the look she gave Lance upon opening the door. The swallowed unease in her expression deepened when she caught a peek of Liones' capital beside Lance's shoulder. From that point onward she barely spoke a word and took flight to her room upstairs as soon as the first lull in the conversation formed.

Everyone seemed to bear a strange mood today, first Lance's father and now Katrina – not to speak of the nonsensical excuses Percival had come up with as Lance had questioned him about Mordred earlier today. The air of bottled tension struck Lance as odd, certainly, but nothing to trouble himself over.

He had disappeared into the storage room in search for some left-over pastry to gnaw away the waiting time when an ear bursting sound shook him to the core, and he fumbled with the empty clay jar in his hands. All senses on alert, he tossed the pot back onto the top shelf and stormed into the main room. Elaine had jumped out of her chair and levitated just this side of the lattice window next to the door. Her expression shifted from disbelief to terror with such insane tardiness that Lance could see the individual muscles flexing and loosening under her skin.

Without a feeling, without a thought, he joined his mother's side. Liones' eastern gates stood in ruins. Metal and stone walls had crippled under a force he had thought impossible. A sea of gigantic figures spread into the city; every one of them reached tall into the sky and made the human housings they tore through look like replicas in a child's toy collection.

Liones capital had towered impregnable amidst the surrounding hills for twenty-five years. Its might fell in less than a day.

Restrained by his mother's loose grip on his sleeve and his inability to act, Lance watched as the creatures paved their way to the city's heart: the royal palace, where the Sins were supposed to meet. If Liones had sent out any forces to combat the sudden onslaught, they were fighting a losing battle. Soon, the enemy had surrounded and overtaken the palace. While tearing the city below their feet to pieces, the Colossai advanced to the southern gates like a single entity. And still no sign of countermeasures from Liones.

The seconds, minutes, hours ticked by – what did the time matter? The city Lance had lived in for the past months, the image of human accomplishments and triumphs, alongside the thousands of souls trapped within these walls, crumbled before him.

Lance caught sight of Ivy running towards the Boar Hat as if the Ten Commandments were biting at her heels. Her appearance managed what no development in the capital had accomplished and kicked Lance's body back into motion. Without stopping to process the blood on her clothes or the emptiness in her eyes, he rushed outside to embrace his cousin in the longest hug they had shared in years.

He had yet to grasp the true extent of what he had witnessed from afar on that day.

* * *

After many hours of scouting the cliffs of Camlann for Colossai, only intercepted by a short period of sleep and no skirmishes to let loose tension, Errin's feet hurt, and her eyes burned from squinting in search for enemy traces for too long. Every little sound brought her stained nerves closer to snapping, and she wished for a cool mountain spring to wash the anxiousness from her face. The mood of her company dragged her spirits down with it. King and Diane lacked any ounce of motivation and only raised their voices if Gowther addressed them with a question in an attempt to lift their gloom for at least a little while. All of them had volunteered to hunt for the remaining Colossai and take a part of the burden from Meliodas' shoulder. But any sort of optimism had dissipated in the harsh winds whistling across the barren land.

The sun of the next day brought no improvements.

Diane had failed to identify the whereabouts of Colossai through her connection to the earth, and aside from a mention of Demon clan magic followed by unnerved looks, King and Gowther had no luck in questioning the magic currents.

Burned out and with great effort, Errin trudged behind Gowther as the group scaled the twisted trail embedded into yet another precipice. The rock provided decent hold, but the path was hardly wide enough for Diane's feet, and every one of her steps sent a wave of scree tumbling over the edge. The green hills of the valley yawned below them, cast into the shadows of the eastern mountains. The weight of her armor slowed Errin's walk, and her skin under the gold-covered metal itched from sweat and the rough under-garment. She needed a Colossai to fight, otherwise she would take out her anger on her equipment. And a broken sword handle would solve none of her problems.

But instead of a fight, Errin was met with a village at the top of the trail. The architects had used the widened ledge reaching out of the mountain side and had carved buildings into the stone, small houses with windows dark like gaping mouths. One was stacked atop the other, and narrow steps entrenched into the cliffside connected the upper levels to the town center on the ledge of polished granite. Unless one stood on the overhang itself, the village remained hidden from sight in the crooked rock formations of the cliff. A handful of simple-clothed villagers bustled across the trails but stopped to examine the odd party of four.

"Maybe Diane and I should wait farther down," King said as he shifted under the curious gazes. "I think I saw a half-destroyed crossroad earlier. We can watch out for tracks back there."

"Understood. There is no harm in splitting up when there are no traces of Colossai close by," Gowther said, but the other's unease didn't pass him by unnoticed. "Errin, I suggest we question the villagers about unusual happenings in the past days that could relate to our search. They will be more inclined to trust one of their kind."

Errin bit her lips but said nothing. Part of her wanted to rather scale the remote cliffs nearby, regardless of the toll this trip would demand from her body and motivation. But Gowther's plan had the highest probability of success, and running from people, and their need to stare down every stone not resting where it ought to, had little point. Besides, she was certain there had been no crossroads within the last mile of their way up the mountain side.

The group parted without further objections, and Errin followed Gowther as he approached the cluster of houses. A handful of faces peeked out of the low doorframes and course-crafted holes posing as windows. A group of boys hurried after a ball while a girl in a sand-colored dress watched.

"Have you been to this village before?" Gowther asked. His eyes never left the unique layout of the town, and he absorbed every detail with care, almost like one would a lost sibling after years of separation.

Errin banned the image of Camelot's towers from her mind. "No, my hometown lies farther south."

"I've read about a town called Northgalis embedded into a rocky precipice quite like this one," Gowther said, and the nostalgia resonated with his voice. "It was the setting of a story I used to read to someone very special. We liked to imagine to one day go there and play out the story for ourselves."

"What changed that you never found the chance to journey here?" Errin had no intention to press Gowther, but she needed an excuse to delay the talk with the locals. Her armor was too valuable, too refined underneath the dust of the past days to fit in, and the stares rested on her like hidden daggers pointed at her throat.

"She passed away. I knew her time was limited, even more so than what other humans struggle against. But my heart refused to comprehend when it actually happened. She was my only friend for a long time and cared about me when no one else did, when I was but a lonely soul wandering through the ruins of the past. I wish she had a chance to see at least one of the mystical places in our books."

Errin stared at the detailed pommel of her sword, took in the detailed carvings, the tiny red stones embedded into steel. The ruby shards glistered in the sun despite the lack of polish she had granted her most prized possession. She still remembered how the weight of the weapon had felt in her hands when Mordred had presented her the sword on her eighteenth birthday, how she had bubbled with thankfulness for the most beautiful gift someone had given her. She suddenly wished to walk the slate path through the town with him instead of Gowther. He might have stolen a few hours without King Arthur's permission to read the same story, a disheartened kid in a massive library filled with books no else cared to read.

"Did you… ever try to revive her?" Errin asked. "To say things you wanted to say but never had the chance to?"

"I did. But my inability to let go of what I lost lead to many pains I caused others. With the help of my comrades, I eventually learned to accept loss, but I wish I had understood sooner that some things stay broken, regardless of your efforts to mend them."

"But don't you miss her?"

"I do. Often. But I have memories that warm my heart when I think of the precious time we shared. And I believe she would be proud to see who I became since we last met."

Errin lacked the same optimism. The circle of people she held close was so small, how could she continue and smile if a cruel twist of fate ripped away one more? How could she cherish the memories more than the person themselves?

The group of locals Gowther steered towards offered her diversion from the stream of questions meandering through her thoughts. Thankfully, Gowther took over the conversation. Errin managed her role as refugee of Camlann with little more than a handful timely nods, and safe for the young girl clinging to the wooden signpost that identified the building behind it as the local junk shop, no one paid her further mind. The girl stared at Errin with these uncomfortable blue eyes for the duration of the fruitless conversation; the townspeople had seen no signs of Colossai, except for the blabber of a few children intent to act important. Gowther thanked the villagers, and Errin set in motion when someone tugged at her hand.

The girl with the blue eyes and sand-colored dress.

"Look, I don't have time to play," Errin snapped and placed a demonstrative step forward. "Ask your friends or your parents to entertain you."

The girl refused to budge and held onto Errin's fingers with a defiant stare. Fine then. If words wouldn't do the trick, force ought to. Errin pulled her arm back, and the girl only saved herself from a fall into the dust by crashing into Errin's armored legs.

"I don't need your pity, nor do I have any to spare! Let go of me at once."

The order met deaf ears, and Errin raised a hand to push the little brat away when the broken voice at her knees found its way through her fury. "I have no parents. No friends. They went away when the tower collapsed. The people here say they went to the earth."

Errin's initial confusion subsided when the girl lifted her chin from her leg to look at her. The puffy cheeks, the running nose, the eyes too stubborn to let go of the tears cut deep. The guilt surged, and Errin dropped to her knees beside the girl when the rage, the fuel that had kept her going fled her system. Here she was, in the middle of some remote town at the end of the world, screaming at a girl who had lost her family. All because every second that didn't bring her closer to the goal of this journey, to Mordred, felt like a personal failure.

"I'm sorry," Errin said and placed the girl on her feet at arm's length. Mordred had never failed to offer a hand to an upset little girl with no else to rely on. "I was being unfair. Even though so much happened to you, you made it this far. I on the other hand… well, look at me, all I do is push people around. And I'm too weak to admit even that."

The girl's eyes had cleared of unshed tears and pierced Errin with this unnatural blue. "You are strong. You have a sword. You could fight the mountain that made the tower collapse. Its big hands won't catch you because you have a sword to fight."

Errin furrowed as she tried to make sense of the child's odd words. Then the pieces clicked together. Only one creature tall as a mountain had hands. "Do you know where this mountain has gone to?" Errin had to fight the urge to shake the answer out of the girl.

"It always walks down the meadow where the children go to play. This path goes to the meadow, but the adults don't like the path. I saw the mountain there. But I don't have a sword to fight it. Will you fight the mountain?"

"I will. If you tell me your name."

"Isolde."

"Thank you, Isolde," Errin said, climbed to her feet, and held the girl's hand for a brief moment. "You helped me more than I can repay you. It's hard to accept, but you have to stay strong, okay? Just know that the creature will pay for what it did."

Gowther, who had waited at the edge of the village, shot Errin a confused look when she rejoined his side after nodding to this lost, dust-covered girl on the street, but made no objections when Errin retold what she had learned about the whereabouts of a Colossai.

Rejoining with King and Diane held little more challenge than finding the meadow. The Colossai had stomped down the grass and had snapped every little twig in sight, but it's destructive behavior only lasted for a few moments after the creature became aware of their presence. A jolt went through its form before it had even crossed the distance to open the fight with a mighty swing of this arms, and it tilted its head is if to listen.

Then the Colossai retreated. Without even a look back at its adversaries, the creature stormed down the path heading into the valley below. Now _that_ was an unwanted surprise.

"Any idea on what changed so that it no longer wants us dead?" Errin asked Gowther who was readjusting his glasses. He too, couldn't believe what he was seeing.

"As the Captain pointed out, the Colossai haven't received a command in over three thousand years and have therefore only followed a single ideal. Based on this sudden change in behavior, I would assume they have received new orders." Gowther was about to follow the creature but stopped himself with a look behind; neither King nor Diane displayed any desire to further hunt down the fleeing enemy, both still worn down by the discovery of the Colossai's true nature.

After reasoning back and forth a little about what to do, they agreed to follow the Colossai. Soon Errin realized they were tracing back their steps to the seal. She had come across these rock formations and that creek running down a cliff face before. Her theory was confirmed when they reunited with Merlin and her group.

Aside from the Colossai Errin had wanted to fight, the one that had killed Isolde's parents, four other creatures had gathered around the seal and the remains of the surrounding canyon. Lance was trying his best to mask the idiotic grin on his face as he saw the newcomers approaching. Whatever had compelled the Colossai to drop their hostile patterns, he definitely had his hands in it. Merlin, meanwhile, looked strangely pleased with the cluster of pacified Colossai, as though some meticulous plan she had cooked up had come to fruition, and the results exceeded her expectations.

"Is this your work, Merlin?" Diane asked.

"I won't dare taking credit for something that isn't my working," Merlin said, but her satisfied expression told a different story.

"There's no way the Colossai would behave like this without some outside force convincing them," he said and threw the group around Lance an appraising look.

"Regardless of how the Colossai ended up here, we need to decide how to deal with them," Gowther said. "While they aren't hostile at the moment their behavior could change upon coming into contact with a triggering presence, such as the Captain's."

"We can't leave them alive if that's what you mean," Errin said.

If ending these creatures prevented Mordred from seizing Liones, if this could return a little justice to the people who had died at the Colossai's hands, she would take the burden. Without hesitation.

"I understand your anger, Errin," King said. His voice had become softer, and his eyes brimmed with compassion for the supposed family she had lost when the Colossai had attacked. "But there might be a way to end this conflict peacefully. Without more of them getting hurt."

"I doubt we'll be that lucky." The unexpected comment drew all attention to the person who voiced it as Ban, accompanied by Meliodas and Elizabeth, approached the group. All three of them bared grim expressions. "We've tried just about every trick in the book. Those things rather die than accept our help."

"You can't know that," Diane snapped before she realized her harshness and averted her gaze.

"If the bond between Giant and Colossai is indeed strong enough to sustain millennia, I'm afraid there aren't any measures we can take to separate them," Merlin said, though not without understanding in her tone. "If anything, ending their existence now would be an act of mercy."

"I'll do it then." Meliodas words stirred up a storm of disagreement. The Sins hurled reminders of risks and consequences at him, but none of them hit the target. Meliodas smiled, or rather ordered his lips to overplay the sadness lingering all over his face. "I'm aware of the risk. Which is why I don't want any of you to stay here. I'll do my best to control my powers, but we all know I can't make promises when it comes to this."

"You can't take all this alone, Captain," Escanor said, his voice for once devoid of shaking.

"Of course, we want the Colossai to disappear," Lance threw in, "but if the price is as high to pay as you all indicate, then I don't wanna push you to do it. You've already helped us a great deal."

Errin distrusted the capabilities of her ears. Did Lance seriously support the idea of letting the Colossai live? He had to be aware that, as a result of his lack of willpower, he would condemn the people who had suffered, who had died because of the Colossai during the Fall to the same fate as those who had passed already. The Captain's emotional stability could never outweigh the lives of hundreds, of thousands. Lance was a fool for believing anything else.

"There should be other ways to defeat them than relying on the Captain's powers," Gowther said. "I can't say my own magic potential is high enough to end their existence fast enough. But King, you should be able to –"

"Don't… please don't ask me."

King's eyes trailed over the cluster of Colossai, in desperate search for the signs of hostility that would warrant their destruction through his hands. But there was nothing to see. The stone creatures stood still and waited for their demise.

"It's okay, King, no one'll think less of you because you want to spare their lives," Meliodas said. "But we all know how dangerous they can be. I can't let them continue threatening the mortal realm. And for as bad of an idea as it is, I'm gonna use the Demon King's power to destroy them."

Errin breathed in a lungful of air. At least one of them was eager to take action and right what was set wrong. If fate showed some kindness, she and her unlikely company might even fulfill what they had set out to do.

* * *

The empty expression on her dad's face broke through the numbness of surging and diminishing guilt, and Katrina longed to tell him that he didn't need to load this burden onto his shoulders. Her stomach backflipped, and the cold bit into her skin. Meliodas' words weighed down on the group, but no one dared to question his decision.

"Merlin, would you be so kind?"

Merlin's face bore a stone mask vacant of emotions when she stepped forward and raised her hands towards the seal amidst the rubble of the canyon. "«Absolute Cancel»," she said, the personification of calm.

Katrina flinched as the rift in the seal's surface deepened, spread from top to bottom until the seal was no more, and a dark hole replaced its ominous presence. Out of this hole, the remaining Colossai emerged one after the other, a line of white prisoners on their way to the scaffold. When the last one had passed the barrier to the mortal plain, the black rift disappeared. In its stead, the field held, next to a chaos of boulders and rocks of dark stone, a total of eighteen Colossai. They waited with the patience of the hopeless. Left without orders to give them purpose, they stood perfectly still; their featureless heads never indicated that they realized their surroundings.

But as Meliodas gave the group a last look-over to gather the necessary strength he needed to perform the destructive spell, and as Merlin readied herself to cast a protective barrier around them, Elizabeth stepped forward. Without another word, she turned one palm to the Colossai. The symbol of the Goddess Clan reigned supreme and drowned out the blue of her eyes. Long before Meliodas had a chance to grasp what was about to unfold, light emitted from Elizabeth's open palm, so bright and all-encompassing that Katrina had to squint her eyes. «Ark» spread until the spell engulfed the Colossai, purged them of their energy and the bond that had kept them alive for three thousand years.

When the light ceased, the remains of the Colossai crumbled. Their shells broke, heads and arms were reduced to gravel. Fine stone dust covered Katrina's mouth and nose, and the air ran thin. What remained of the Colossai fell down to the earth from which they originated.

The dead bodies of the Giants were buried beneath.

This was wrong. Katrina only knew her mother as kind, caring, gentle towards every little creature that crossed her path. Her hands had stroked Katrina's hair and healed the bruises on her knees so many times she had no way to remember them all. And with those same hands, Elizabeth had killed.

Like Katrina had.

Elizabeth had raised her hands for Meliodas' sake and for the strangers she knew for only a few days, who claimed to stem from a kingdom she had never visited before. Could her reasons justify the act of killing?

Katrina wasn't sure. The uncertainty lingered beside her like a second shadow. But she wanted to forgive her mother and refused to hold the deaths she had caused against her. Katrina held onto the belied that killing was wrong without exceptions, but the scared child in her rejoiced because the Colossai were gone. All other thoughts feel silent next to the tidal wave of relief. With the Colossai, the future that would see the death of her parents had died. Once Katrina would be back home, she would be able to talk to them, tell them how much she had missed them, and never speak of the Fall of Liones or the Colossai again.

But this gleaming future lay far ahead.

In the aftermath of Elizabeth's destructive «Ark», the group stood dumbfounded for a few moments, unable to comprehend the happenings. Even Merlin stared at Elizabeth, eyes wide with surprise. Unfathomable thoughts chased through her head behind her raised brows. When movement returned to their group, conversation remained low and muttered at best, as though their words could awaken vengeful ghosts.

Gowther, the most level-headed of them, suggested to leave the area and journey to the small village across the southern slopes he had spotted back when they had first explored the valley, before they had crossed paths with any Colossai. No one found the motivation to argue against his plan.

Katrina risked one last look over her shoulder, back to where the seal had once hovered in the air. Diane stood at the edge of the destroyed canyon, gaze locked to the sight of death and destruction. King floated a few steps away from her, far enough to allow her a sense of privacy but close enough to express his condolences and gift her comfort through his presence.

Still wrapped in silence, Diane lifted one hand. The earth bent to her will and gave in under the dead Giants and desolate canyon ruins, swallowed them whole, let stone return to stone. Then the rift closed and formed a gentle hill to mark the final tomb for the corpses of eighteen fallen Giants.

Katrina felt the firm yet supportive grip of a hand on her shoulders and allowed Errin to direct her away from the burial ground.

And despite refraining the urge to look back to see it happen, the low thud with which the earth closed the remaining gap echoed in her ears and vibrated in her feet. The door to this chapter of their story slammed shut.

* * *

The village Gowther had referred to was little more than a cluster of simple wooden housings with straw roofs, the color washed out from years of rainfall and snow. A small well made up the town's center, a pitiful thing that looked as though it was about to crumble before their eyes. But in stark contrast to the gloom look of the village, the inhabitants were nothing short of welcoming when they greeted the unexpected group of colorful strangers. Even this far from the battlefields of the New Holy War, word had spread of the famous Seven Deadly Sins and their victory against the demonic forces of the Underworld. The villagers' admiration for these legendary heroes shone off their faces as they led the group towards the 'festivity ground', a patch of short grass encircled by a decaying wooden fence beyond the village's outskirts.

No matter how heavy the days of travelling, fighting and emotional challenge weighed them down, it was impossible to remain untouched by the kindness these people displayed. Kindness and open curiosity. King and Diane in particular garnered the attention of the local children, and in no time an assembly of spectators formed around them to gawk at the tall warrior and the shimmering Fairy wings. But Gowther's uncommon pink hair-color found its fair share of young fans as well.

Katrina swallowed hard as she realized that, age-wise, she was closer to many of them than she was to Ivy and Lance. The past days alone felt like an entire lifetime burdened on her shoulders.

To answer a question from Ban, the old man who had first welcomed them as a type of mediator or chief, told them he and his town had been unaware of the Colossai roaming the nearby Rushen Valley. But he confirmed that contact to settlements further to the north, including Sorestan and Rushen Town, had broken off without warning a few days ago. Lance sighed in relief. At least the ruse he had created to trick the Sins held on.

When the sun neared the mountain ridges, the hosts offered massive amounts of food and drink with more dishes to choose from than Katrina could try in one evening. Stews of rabbit and root vegetables, slices of wild goat covered in hazelnut paste, and smoked fish on a vast selection of bread. The cooking was simple, but after the exhaustions of the day, everyone deemed the laden plates a feast. The villagers had to have raided all their stocks to cater their guests. Amidst the reemerging conversation Katrina even found the motivation to try some of the pastry Errin handed her.

With the exception of King and Diane, who were both surrounded by inquisitive children that never seemed to run out of questions to ask, the two parties in their quest group had merged to form a loose circle. The Sins and their children sat together and joked like old friends, and without the age difference, one would have been unable to tell that five people in their midst had joined only a few days ago – much less guess that they didn't stem from the same time period.

With glaring nostalgia, Katrina thought about the annual celebration of the disbandment of the Seven Deadly Sins. She had always looked forward to the event, and to see all of them together like this, chatting, laughing, enjoying the sense of unity their group provided them with more than anything else ever had, filled her with a longing that spoiled her appetite. No matter how close the resemblance seemed in the dim light of the disappearing sun, in the end, the scenery only served to remind her how much she missed Cynthia and Helbram and Aura. How much had happened since that summer morning when her parents had left but never returned.

When Katrina buried the yearning for days passed, Elizabeth spoke up. "Everyone has been so welcoming. Even after five years, the people still show gratitude towards us because we ended the New Holy War. It's not that I'm ungrateful for the kindness we are offered, but I'm not sure I will ever get used to it. Do you think this kind of behavior ever ceases?"

"Humans have a rather short memory span compared to members of other clans," Gowther answered. "With enough time, one generation maybe, they will have moved on entirely."

"Yeah, in Liones' capital they hardly even give ya a second glance when ya walk down the streets," Ban said and refilled his mug. "This is a nice change of pace if you ask me. But I could really go without all these brats swarming you like a juicy exhibit." The last sentence was growled with all the anger of a mock threat, and the young boy who had come closer to inspect the strangers shrieked and fled into the arms of his waiting mother as fast as his short legs could carry him.

Elizabeth chuckled. "Diane and King seem to enjoy the attention." She nodded towards where Diane lifted a pair of kids from the ground, much to their delight. The gloom from before had vanished from their faces, and under shouting and laughing, King carried a wide-eyed boy to Diane's shoulder where he petted her locks with his tiny hands.

"That's just 'cause they have a strange sense of what's fun."

"You don't like children all that much?" Ivy asked Ban.

"Nah, they're fine. As long as they don't come in packages of more than two. And you're the exception of course." Ban shot a playful wink in Ivy's direction, and her face reddened. Demonstratively, she budged up to Lance to get an additional inch between herself and her uncle.

Ban's grin widened before he turned towards Meliodas, who had followed the exchange with a smirk. "Whaddoya think, Captain, how many of those do you wanna fill the Boar Hat with?"

"As many as possible," Meliodas said and emphasized his words with a fist slammed into his palm. "I still plan on watching my child annoy the living daylights out of yours and remind them how much of an idiot they are. Just like their father."

Lance choked on his drink. The possible future in which Ivy _and_ a younger version of Meliodas tormented every step he took played out before his eyes, and the horror spoke out of his derailed features. With his words, Meliodas had opened the gates to Lance's personal hell. Ivy needed all her might to contain her giggles.

What had changed?

Regardless of the small smile Katrina's lips formed at Lance's revulsion and Ivy's struggle, this question remained the most prominent thought and banged at the walls of her head in demand for answers. For the longest time, Katrina had wished for a sibling, older or younger, boy or girl, no matter, but her prayers had been ignored. Her parents had lulled her with flimsy excuses and empty phrases along the lines of _we have you and that's enough_, and Katrina had learned to come to terms with their decision. But now her dad alluded to an opposite mindset, a mindset in such stark contrast to what Katrina was used to hear, that she was unable to let the conundrum rest unsolved.

Was she the problem? Had her parents realized the impending doom a child with hell- and heavenly-given powers represented through her actions, or rather her lack of control over them?

While her thoughts were running haywire with speculations, Katrina blacked out the ongoing chatter. The voices blurred to a humming, and she nearly missed the words of gratitude Lance and Ivy voiced once an empty space in the conversation emerged.

"… without you, we would've had no shot against the Colossai," Ivy concluded. Her eyes trailed over the group, including her parents who had managed to tear themselves from the unyielding children, before they came to rest on Elizabeth.

"I hope you and all the other people of Camlann will be spared a tragedy like this in the future," Elizabeth said. "I am truly sorry for your loss."

Ivy fell silent for a few heartbeats. When Lance nudged her elbow with a concerned look, the liveliness returned to her face. "It's okay. It'll get better now. Thanks to all of you." The smile Ivy mustered missed any joy, but with a little squinting it could pass as optimistic.

Errin looked at Ivy with eyes wide like an animal jolted out of its solitude by sudden light. The two had yet to reconcile, but maybe with the Colossai out of the picture, one of them could make the first step. The matter of how to deal with Mordred no longer needed to stand between them. A long time ago, half-asleep and exhausted to no end, Katrina had promised to help Errin save Mordred. Keeping this promise had never seemed so close to reality.

Katrina gave into a sudden impulse and leaned her head against Errin's armored arm. Despite the discomfort of the metal plate, she snuggled deeper into the touch. Errin's eyes shot away from Ivy, and she stared at Katrina with deepened disbelief. When had she last experienced somebody's closeness like this? A soft smile formed on Errin's lips, slowly, as if she needed to remember how to perform this simple action. Katrina liked her better this way.

"It's over now. Soon we'll all be home again," Errin whispered.

What matters were discussed or stories shared between the group no longer reached Katrina. With all the discomfort in the back of her mind disappeared, she fell asleep to the muffled voices of those people that mattered most in this world.

* * *

_He really does care. It's just that he isn't used to showing it to anyone._

Lance's dream collapsed around him. Elaine's disembodied voice echoed through the maze of his subconscious until her words rung in an intangible canon from the edges of his limbic system. Gravity betrayed him, and the foggy horizon of his dreamscape swayed and tilted, a shipwreck waiting to happen. Then a different voice called his name that had no business being there.

"Lance… Lance!"

"If it isn't Mordred or the end of the world, it can wait a couple hours," Lance groaned and squeezed his eyes shut tighter. If he pretended to drop dead, maybe his attacker would leave and search for other prey. The trick worked wonders for certain critters.

But Ivy had never been one to take no for an answer. "Lance, please." The urgency in her voice ripped the remnants of sleepiness out of his mind, and Lance jolted awake to meet her troubled gaze. She bent over him, hands outstretched to shake him another time.

"What is it? Haven't we grown out of post-nightmare discourses?"

"I need to talk to you."

"In the middle of the night?" Lance burst out loud enough for Ivy to jump and avert her eyes.

He couldn't think of anything she might deem important enough to discuss. If all went according to plan, they would bid the Sins farewell tomorrow morning, pretend to journey to Camlann's capital – or any other town name Gaius could offer at the top of his hat –, and use the Time Crystal to get out of the hellhole known as the past. Back at home, Lance would have plenty of time to spare for chit-chats. For now, sleep sounded a lot more alluring.

"Not just with you," Ivy said and looked over the sleeping Sins nearby. After a deep breath, she continued. "There's something I've kept from you for too long, and I feel like I owe you an explanation."

"Okay." Lance failed to come up with a better response and swallowed a yawn.

The weak reply was encouragement enough for Ivy, as she nodded and made her way through the makeshift campsite. A bit less stompy than usual, she sidestepped Ban's carelessly stretched legs and dropped down beside Errin to repeat the process of ripping an innocent soul from their dreams.

The drowsiness still clothed Lance's thoughts after Ivy had woken Errin and Katrina and tore Gaius away from his beloved book – he was even reading that thing at night, _in the dark_ –, but his curiosity was fervent enough to silence the numerous complaints the weak part of his brain hurled at him.

Ivy directed them a good distance away from the festivity ground, far enough to leave ear-shot. On the crest of a grassy hill the type of which plastered the southern regions of Camlann, they sat down at Ivy's request. She remained tense after she slumped into the grass and fiddled with her bracelet. Her determination for whatever she had wanted to tell them dissolved. But none of the others jumped to her aid; Katrina and Gaius looked at her with curiosity, and Errin bore her familiar poker face. At least she refrained from a venomous comment.

When Lance decided he had waited long enough that reminding Ivy to better say something before he fell asleep seemed worth the risk, she at last opened her mouth. "I wanted to tell you this now because I feel like it needs to be said before we get back home. All we've done so far has been in service of preventing The Fall of Liones and save our families. But most of what you know about The Fall is based on what little I told you about it. I'm… thankful that you never questioned my word, even though I've given you next to nothing to work with."

Ivy paused to meet their eyes in passing. In a surprising turn of events, she held Errin's gaze the longest. "Which is why I want to tell you all that I've seen during The Fall now. I hope this will explain why we've been doing all this and help you understand why Mordred is so dangerous, even without the Colossai on his side. Maybe you'll even understand why I kept this from you…"

A slight tremor had invaded Ivy's voice. While locking her eyes onto some point in the dark between Lance's and Errin's heads, she took a deep breath. Then she resumed speaking.

"My family arrived at Liones' capital later than expected on the day of The Fall. The plan was for mom and dad to escort us halfway through Liones and then head to this council with Gilthunder and the other Sins. I was supposed to have an eye on Helbram, Aura, and Cynthia from that point onward until we would meet up with Lance and Katrina at the Boar Hat. Helbram complained about being away from mom for the next couple hours. She reassured that it'll be over sooner than he thinks." A sad smile crept over Ivy's features at the memory. The pale moonlight gave her features a hollow, ghostly look.

"We didn't even manage half the way. There was this awfully loud crashing sound. What little human folk was on the streets at the time panicked and fled for their lives. Dad floated up to see what was happening. He said that Camelot had never been the main goal, that Mordred had been after Liones all along. I'd never seen him this terrified before." A slight pause and another deep breath. "The Colossai were already advancing through the eastern gates while we stood there, in the middle of the deserted street, while mom and dad were arguing about what to do with us. Mom wanted to keep us closer rather than trying to have us escape to the Boar Hat because we had no idea what other forces Mordred had stationed outside the city. Dad disliked the idea. But he gave in – I wish he hadn't.

"There is this safehouse that we've been to a couple of times, not far from where we were at the time." Lance nodded, even though he doubted Ivy took notice. He remembered the safehouse, located somewhere to the northwest from the castle. The house with its confusing cellar layout had been set up for Liones' royal family in times of great peril. During the past years of peace no one had had any need for the building, and it had thereby turned into one of Katrina's favorite playgrounds. She had dragged Lance and Ivy to play hide-and-seek in the twisting rooms a few times when they had been younger.

"We were supposed to go to the safehouse and wait the battle out until mom and dad would come back for us," Ivy continued. "Dad explicitly told me that I was responsible for my siblings. But I failed. On all fronts. While mom and dad headed south to meet up with Meliodas and the rest, we made our way towards the safehouse. That was when we ran into the first Colossai. You've seen how they can fight, it only took one of them to knock me out cold. I don't remember much of the next few minutes, but Mordred's Colossai had run over the castle, and he wanted us to be brought there."

Lance began to grasp where the story headed. Ivy believed she and her siblings had been captured on Mordred's behalf with a clear intent in mind. And Lance could only think of so many reasons Mordred could have had.

After a few heartbeats of silence, Ivy continued. "He wanted mom and dad to go after us and walk right into the trap he had set up for them. He knew that they could be defeated more easily when they were separated from the other Sins. Mordred…" Ivy's voice betrayed her and she closed her eyes, fighting to find the strength to continue.

"The next thing I know is that I woke up in Liones' castle while dad was begging Mordred for mom's life. It took me some time to understand what had happened, what _was happening_. From what I can tell, Mordred tortured her to the point where she was hardly alive anymore. Dad was trapped by some sort of magic spell; he couldn't do anything to help her. Except beg Mordred over and over again to stop it. He did stop it eventually. By killing her. I must have made a sound because dad and Mordred realized that I was conscious. Mordred raised his voice to me to say I shouldn't have to see this. See what he did.

"It wasn't just my mom who he had killed. By then, Helbram and Cynthia were already dead. At least with Helbram he didn't suffer for long." Ivy' voice sounded distant. Like these words, these memories belonged to a stranger. "Aura was still alive, but only because the stab wound was placed so that it would take longer for her to die. She bled to death right in front of me. And I could do about it. I don't know why Mordred did any of this; out of enjoyment, necessity, or just because he believed he would be able to kill mom and dad easier that way. But he did it, and I was certain I would be next. Dad saved me. He managed to break the spell that was holding him and told me to run and find Ban. Somehow, I made it. Despite how weak my legs felt and despite the Colossai roaming the castle grounds, I made it out of the inner walls. Dad had sent one form of Chastifol with me. And when the Spirit Spear fell to the ground, I knew he was gone too."

Lance felt the need to throw up as all the darkest fantasies he had conjured in his head over the past days came to fruition, realized by Ivy's broken words bar any mercy. The sick-inducing emptiness deepened into a bottomless abyss when her eyes rested on him. Too many apologies swam in them.

"That was when Ban found me. I didn't manage a single cohesive word, but he understood. He told me to find Meliodas at the south gate and get out of the city while he would take on Mordred. That was the last time I saw him." All energy and liveliness had left Ivy, and her form shrunk until she was the eight-year-old girl with nightmares about fire Lance had reassured with words.

"Meliodas wasn't at the gate when I got there," Ivy said, "so I fled through the tunnel that would lead me right to the Boar Hat. There I met up with you. You know the rest. It's safe to say that Meliodas died, as did Elizabeth and Gowther while defending the southern gates. I assume Ban was killed when he faced Mordred alone. Mordred, he… he planned all this to take down the Sins one at a time, and there was no moral barrier he wouldn't break to reach there. Helbram, Aura, Cynthia – they were innocent, they posed no threat to him. And he murdered them anyway. Just because they served his great plan. I once thought I knew Mordred. But there's nothing left of who I thought he was. I want you to remember that when we go back. Because eventually we need to face himself, not just his pawns.

"If we don't, we gained nothing on this trip."

In the absence of Ivy's voice, the world in its entirety fell quiet, and a thick silence descended from the star-sprinkled sky to engulf them, whole and absolute. Errin stared at Ivy as though she could move her to renounce the truth she had laid out before them. Katrina and Gaius watched on without moving a muscle; unphased on the outside but struggling to comprehend inside.

Lance didn't know what to do, what to say. All compassionate words he had assembled whenever he had envisioned this moment had escaped his cold fingers. His mind was blank and overflew with the events of The Fall from Ivy's point of view, from his own until the images merged into a construct of death and tragedy.

All the while, Ivy looked at him with unshed tears glistering in her eyes, in the desperate hope of those uplifting words she needed to hold onto. But Lance couldn't offer her any.

* * *

**(A/N)** This chapter was a nightmare to edit. I've spent the past week shifting and rewriting these parts, and I'm still unsure whether I'm happy with the result. Errin's section looks nothing like it did in my first draft. And as a result, you get the longest chapter yet. I considered cutting Ivy's story because I will go more in depth about The Fall of Liones in the next chapter, but the way she phrased the events and Mordred's role in it are crucial for her character (and it complimented Lance's flashback too well to waste that chance). Also fair warning, the next chapter will be _dark_. Probably the cruelest piece I've ever written.

I will try to put that one out faster, but it's looking like another long chapter, so I can't promise anything. So long!


	14. The Fall of Liones

**(A/N)** If the title didn't give it away, this chapter will focus on The Fall of Liones from the Sins' point of view. And in case Ivy's story in the previous chapter didn't make it clear, this will include graphic deaths of characters, including children. If you are sensitive towards subject matter like this, I encourage you to skip this chapter. While it does give some insight into Mordred and solves a few riddles I've set up earlier, you should be able to follow the rest of the story without detailed knowledge of events in this particular chapter.

Feel free to stone me in the comments for the crimes I have committed. Part of me feels awful about this as well. The other part loves to remind me that this cruelty was necessary.

* * *

The streets of Liones' capital looked almost the same after such a long time of absence. The steep, blue rooftops crowned the houses clad in wood and clay as they always had, and the web of alleyways and avenues seemed as picturesque as usual. A pretty tiny city for tiny people. The scenery awed Diane the same way as during her previous walks through these streets, but a pinch of bitterness clouded her view whenever her mind drifted towards the reason for her visit.

All sort of communication with Merlin had ceased two days after she had informed them about Mordred's alliance with the Colossai. Her disappearance had placed further urgency onto the crisis meeting scheduled an hour from now. Gilthunder had decreed alertness on the city's southern borders, and once Escanor would arrive with a handful of trusted knights of Camelot, the stones would be set for a preemptive strike against Mordred. Any other strategy born from the meeting lay too far out of possibility's reach. King had to realize this too.

His eyes had lost their way in deep thoughts as he floated beside her; he still worried. And the compassionate side of him that had used to mentor Mordred still wished to save him, still constructed a plan to vouch in Mordred's favor. Diane loved him for the kindness he displayed, but maybe it was best if he gave up on the image of Mordred as a frustrated, young boy. The boy had grown into a man with ambitions.

Before Diane could voice supportive words to chase away King's troubled thoughts for what had to have been the hundredth time in the past days, Helbram tucked at her arm.

"Mommy, Aura said you and dad won't come with us to the Boar Hat. But she's wrong, right?" Helbram's wide eyes swam in fear. He had never sought for adventure the way his older sisters had, but this behavior was cause for concern, and Diane's motherly instincts sent off blaring alarm lights. His tiny hands clawed into her arm in an attempt to persuade her to stay with him.

"It'll only be for a couple hours," Diane said and stroked his soft, reddish-brown hair. He was still so young. "And you'll have your siblings and Lance and Katrina to keep you company. We'll be back in no time, promise."

The assurance satisfied Helbram enough to release Diane's arm, and he hurried to reach Aura who bobbled in the air with an invitation for Helbram to try and catch her. Their playful giggles grew fainter when they raced around the upcoming corner.

Diane, reluctant to free her attention from her two youngest children, turned to face Cynthia. She had barely said a word beyond 'yes' and 'okay' all day, and her careful patter had devolved into an aimless trudge. She was flexing her right hand, straining and releasing muscles in an effort to calm herself, a habit Cynthia had perfected over the last eight years.

Diane fought the urge to stroke her daughter's hair as she had done with Helbram. By now, she knew well enough how little Cynthia thought of the action, even when Diane performed it with the best of intentions. Cynthia's eyes scurried over the barren street in search for enemies and dark omens that weren't there. Another dream had had to upset her. She had so many of those…

While Diane was assessing how to best approach the matter without backing Cynthia into a corner, an impulse throbbed through the back of her head, and the ground beneath her feet rumbled. Her subconscious noted the silence that had befallen the city. Her head shot eastwards. Half a second before something large and heavy crashed and broke with a sound loud enough to be heard back home, in the Fairy King's Forest.

Then the screams broke out.

"King?!" Diane called out alarmed but without need, as King had ascended over the rooftops to identify the source of the uproar.

The noise of the initial crash had echoed out and left room for a crescendo of panicked outcries and alarmed warnings and commands to grow in intensity. Disturbed by the churned-up pool of emotions all around, Helbram and Aura abandoned their game and hurried back. Helbram fled into Diane's arms.

"What is this, mommy? All their thoughts are so dark and confusing."

Diane had no idea how to best ease Helbram's anxiety. She would never understand the ins and outs of looking into the hearts of others, but she could imagine the panic of civilians that flooded the streets. Their shouts boomed from every canyon between the houses and towers, walls and archways. Overwhelmed, Diane pulled her son closer. Aura and Ivy looked at her with shared uncertainty while Cynthia's eyes had gone blank and lifeless.

When King floated back down to face Diane, horror spoke from his expression. "The Colossai, they're here. He was never after Camelot. How could I have been so blind?"

Diane's heart ached at the sight of King broken down like this, but taking the blame from his shoulders would do nothing to solve the unfolding disaster. They had no time to argue. The Captain and the majority of the Sins were in Liones – and once they had regrouped, defeating Mordred's Colossai as a union was not only possible but plausible. The opening strike had hit them unprepared, but the odds could have been far worse.

King put his arms around a trembling Aura. "We need to get them out of the city, as soon as possible."

"We don't know what else is out there. Mordred could have surrounded the capital already. The Knights of the Round Table might be waiting out there," Diane said. Her eyes darted between the back of Helbram's head buried in her shoulder and her other children. She needed them to stay close, how could she send them into the fangs of uncertainty beyond the city walls?

An idea struck her mind, at the moment she needed it to emerge the most. "The safehouse! They can stay there while we find the Captain and the others."

King fought with himself; his eyes settled on her, only to dart back to the east where the Colossai advanced through the streets. The men of Liones had nothing to offer against their destructive force, not when as little as a fraction of the things Merlin had said about them was true. But once inside the safehouse, nothing would harm her children. Diane held onto this thought while the seconds raced past. Finally, King nodded and released Aura to float on her own.

He turned to face Ivy. "You still remember the safehouse and how to get there?" A shaky nod followed. "Don't leave until we or one of the other Sins come to get you, okay? Take care of the others, Ivy. Will you do that for me?" King brushed Ivy's cheek in silent support and she gave another nod.

Diane had meanwhile freed herself from Helbram's arms and entrusted him to Cynthia. Ignoring all better judgement, she bent down to hug her daughter. Cynthia stiffened a little but didn't pull back. They parted quickly thereafter, and Diane's thoughts spiraled into chaos as her four children headed back the way they had come. Each step carried them further away and towards the safehouse.

King's gaze on her gave Diane the strength she needed to pull in a calming breath. She needed to remain alert and win no matter what dangers this battle might face her with. King depended on her. Her children depended on her. Steeled with new resolve, Diane followed King and cut the magic stream of her bracelet with a turn of the embedded gemstone. She picked up her pace as her body returned to Giant size.

They had crossed no more than two parallel streets when the first Colossai raced towards them. The earth trembled under its steps, and the creature mowed down the buildings in its path to lock them into combat faster.

Diane and King exchanged a glance and enacted their opening combo attack.

* * *

The fight had separated them almost immediately. Convinced in his capability to handle the second Colossai alone, Diane had left King's side to follow the cries for help that had filled the air during their encounter with the first Colossai.

The group of humans – an elder man and two children – had been trapped within the ruins of their house as the Colossai had stomped through the negligible hurdle. The roof and upper floor could hardly be recognized as such when Diane skidded to a halt in front of the mess of wooden posts, broken, splintered, and angled in unnatural directions. With «Creation» on her side, she lifted the rubble and freed the buried civilians with little challenge, and soon enough, the three humans cowered in the open space of the street, covered in dust and dirt but alive. The man thanked Diane with a parade of effusive praises before talking the children's hands and hurrying down the sloped avenue to escape the invaded city.

Diane remained between the abandoned ruins of tiny houses. The sounds of combat and destruction rung in her ears like a persistent humming.

She regretted leaving her children on their own in a city that they hardly knew and that was swarming with enemies who knew neither remorse nor restraint. Had she made the wrong choice? The question clung to her mind with forceful hands as she traced her steps back to where she had last seen King. Worry tensed the muscles around her spine and catapulted Diane into a state of hyper-awareness in which every sound or distortion in the flow of the earth made her go rigid in anticipation of another attacker.

Electrified like this, Diane anticipated the Colossai long before she caught sight of its tall frame and before the creature became aware of her presence. Mid-run, Diane clapped her hands, and spikes tore out of the earth around the Colossai in accordance to her will. The creature howled as its freedom of movement shrunk to a bare minimum.

Thanks to Merlin's briefing, Diane knew that physical attacks would leave the creature unfazed; their resilience outclassed all other creatures she had fought before. While certainly a hindrance, the problem could be circumvented. In using Gideon as a catalyst, Diane connected the war hammer to the immobilized Colossai with the all the force her magical ability granted her. The hit itself ran off the creature's torso like water off metal, but the magical force behind the attack connected the earth to Diane's will once again. Rock and stone peeled away, and the defeated Colossai became limp in its cage.

Diane had no time to watch the stone figure decay, turned, and headed further north. She no longer intended to find King; the flow of the fight could have led him anywhere in the short time span of her absence, and she would reunite with him soon enough at the south gate, where Meliodas waited for them. More than anything else, Diane needed to make sure her children were safe. And by leading them out of Liones' capital, she would make sure it stayed that way. King had been right; they should have fled out of the city when there had still had been time. If only she had listened rather than holding onto the impractical desire to keep her children close.

Diane hurried through the maze of abandoned city streets. She took turns when necessary but always kept the position of her goal in mind. Her sense of direction guided her without fail. Countless buildings she passed had fallen victim to the Colossai's destructive force, and no minute went by where Diane wasn't forced to slow her steps in order to navigate through rubble blocking the streets. If defenders of Liones had fought in this area, the fights had been too brief to make a difference.

Another loud crashing sound, one similar to the noise with which the Colossai had broken through the east gate, shook Diane. This time, the uproar originated from the royal palace amidst the city. Diane could only hope the people had been given enough time to evacuate the castle.

When she reached the safehouse, the sight of destruction hit her like a gut punch. The safehouse itself and the line of buildings around it were no more. In its stead, wooden posts and remains of stone walls rose from a crater. Dust trailed in the air and made it difficult to breathe, inhibited her to think. She panicked. Frozen still, unable to move a muscle, Diane's gaze darted over the skeletons of human housings until an oddity caught her eye. In mockery of the destruction, countless pieces of paper lay scattered all around. A gust of wind picked up a stack and the manmade leaves further obscured the view. Diane snatched one of them out of the air as it passed her head.

The pristine, white surface bared a single capital letter. M.

_Mordred_.

The message was as much a display of scorn as it was an invitation. Diane crushed the piece of paper between her fingers and glared past the dust and smoke to where the place towered over the cityscape. The many towers and turrets blocked the sun. Its frame crawled with Colossai.

Cold fury controlled her every move as Diane raced towards the heart of the city and to where she knew Mordred was awaiting her.

* * *

He waited for her arrival not in the throne room as Diane had anticipated but in the abandoned great hall of the palace. In constant restlessness, he paced over the meticulously crafted marble-tiled floor. When Diane more broke than pushed through the double doors, Mordred turned to her with an expectant smile. He seemed almost disappointed to see her before he caught himself, and the smile returned, more prevailing than ever.

Diane barely took notice of him, however, because a couple feet behind him, her children huddled at the foot of one of the ornate pillars. Cynthia held Helbram and Aura by their hands, her expression on the brink of lifeless. Next to them, Ivy lay unconscious on the floor, but her chest rose and fell in a comforting, steady rhythm.

Anger singed her relief as Diane turned to Mordred. "If you did anything to harm them, I –"

"Rest assured that I did nothing to them. For the time being that is. I suppose asking you to surrender peacefully is a fruitless effort?"

"You're damn right."

Unwilling to give Mordred any more time to explain himself, Diane charged and crossed the distance with two large steps. The hall was only high-rising by human standards, and the lines of pillars to either side limited her movement, but she refused to allow that hindrance to turn into a critical disadvantage. Regardless of the army of Colossai and traitorous knights at his disposal, Mordred was still human. One solid hit should take him out for good.

But before she could deal the first strike with Gideon against the deceitful crown prince of Camelot, Mordred surprised her by not even trying to evade the obvious attack. Instead he voiced two words, an empty hand outstretched.

"«Full Potential»."

To Diane's horror, her Shrinking Bracelet obeyed to Mordred's magical ability and activated the one spell it was capable of: to shrink its owner and in the process rob Diane of a significant portion of her strength. Against her will, Diane stood in front of Mordred in human size, the hit she had wanted to strike him down with reduced to a deflectable blow.

In terms of physical strength, they stood almost on an even plain field, and this deep in the insides of a human building, Diane was cut off from the earth and the ease with which she controlled its movement. All she could rely on were the basics of one-on-one combat – but her skills had become stale after months, years without proper training. She had led her clan with words instead of deeds for the longest time – a mistake about to cost her dearly. Mordred on the other hand bloomed in his field of expertise. He evaded her hits, thrust forward, and retreated just as quickly, never pausing long enough for Diane to use Gideon's higher damage potential. His speed was her downfall, and before long, Mordred had disarmed her with a hit of the blunt hilt of his sword to her wrist.

Defeated, Diane could do little other than glare at Mordred as he raised his sword up, an inch away from her exposed neck. "Will you kill me now?" she spit out, her tone filled to the brim with malice. She might have lost the fight, but she could still push Mordred until he lost his temper and made a mistake. If he were to kill her right away, he would have no reason to hurt her children. Or so she hoped.

But Mordred's voice was the epitome of controlled. "I won't kill you now. I'm still waiting for someone."

The impact to her skull hit Diane unprepared. Faintly, as if from somewhere underwater, she heard Helbram and Aura scream out before darkness replaced the outside world, and she remembered nothing.

* * *

King had failed to find Diane after she had run off to _somewhere_. The fight against the Colossai, without the aid of physical attacks and with the damaged surroundings in mind, had demanded all his focus. And afterwards he had found no trace to allude to her whereabouts.

He didn't worry; her heart and the relative peace that coursed through it in the break between skirmishes resonated in the back of his mind. Despite the distraction the emotions of others often represented in a fight, King was thankful for the one-sided connection to Diane. Since they had agreed to head to the southern gates, where the Captain had set up the final line of defense, King decided to wait for Diane there. A search without lead amidst the chaos would be rather hopeless.

Next to the Captain, Ban twiddled thumbs in the shadows of the gates when King dropped down beside them. Based on his expression of mild boredom, he wasn't the least bit concerned about the fate of Liones. Whether the empty buildings fell into ruins and succumbed to the first outbroken fires mattered little. But then again, Ban had always been a master of concealing his true thoughts.

"Took you long enough, King," Ban said when he caught sight of him.

King dismissed the mocking critique with a handwave and turned to Meliodas. "Anything from Escanor yet?" he asked and flinched as another crash echoed through the city.

"That's why we set up base here, despite how lousy the backup's been so far," Meliodas answered. Unlike with Ban, disarray had taken hold of his heart, and his eyes skipped past his shoulder to the tall metal-clad entry behind him more than once. "The knights of Liones have been overrun by the Colossai, and without the reinforcements from Camelot, we won't hold ground all that long. So, this gate better be open when they get here."

Other than the open double gates Meliodas pointed at, next to nothing worth defending remained at the plaza or inside the taverns and vendor shops huddled around the most important entryway into the city. The citizens had long left these walls. The scenery brimmed with the illusion of calm compared to the quarters closer to the palace King had left behind, where the Colossai rampaged through the streets. The lack of an immediate threat to face gave him unwanted time to wonder where Diane had gone to. She had to arrive soon.

Another crashing sound, closer this time, brought his wandering thoughts to a screeching halt. Warnings and commands shouted by Holy Knights followed, somewhere to their left. Without a conformation from the Captain other than a short nod, King rushed to where the shouts grew more and more panicked. He picked up speed when the air above a nearby alley exploded into a tornado, and the blow knocked King a few feet back.

Howzer and a badly beaten squad of knights were engaged in a close-quarters fight with a Colossai. Three man had hit the ground, injured or alive, King couldn't tell. Howzer's wind magic played its part in keeping the creature at bay, but the annoyance goaded the Colossai to no end. The enemy unleashed its anger onto the surrounding buildings and buried the fallen knights under a mountain of rubble. If they gave dying sounds, they were drowned out by the roars of the Colossai. King allowed himself no time to think and slammed Chastifol's first form, infused with a non-insignificant amount of his magical energy, into the enemy's torso. The creature reared one last time before it crashed into the line of houses behind it where it remained.

King grit his teeth as his efforts earned him a hit against the shoulder from flying debris, but the injury was too minor to warrant the use of «Pollen Garden». He would need every ounce of energy for the next fight. And the many to follow after that.

Wary at the prospect of enemy reinforcements, King descended to hover next to Howzer, who climbed to his feet with a grunt. "I want a new job when all this is over," he said, but the grim look he gave his two surviving men, one of which hardly able to keep himself upright, spoke volumes. "Please tell me we got a cavalry from Camelot just outside the city."

King shook his head. "Nothing so far. But Escanor is on his way. How are the knights of Liones faring?"

"Bad," Howzer said and handed the last spell orb on his belt to his injured companion. The healing spell enveloped him to close his wounds, but his pale, vacant expression persisted. "I sent the apprentice Holy Knights with the track of people Elizabeth and Gowther guided out of the city. Gil and his family should be out of harm's way by now. But we don't have the manpower to hold our positions. In case you couldn't tell."

"How many Colossai are we up against?" Despite the relative silence around, King felt like a fly trapped in a spider's web. Another enemy could crash into their party at any second.

"Dunno. Could be up to fifty. And I've seen a couple of Mordred's Round Table rats swarm around the palace. This is bad, King. You and your Sins better come up with a magic ace up your sleeve, otherwise we'll be sitting ducks for Mordred's troops to shoot at."

"The Captain will come up with something," King said with pure conviction. If anyone could turn this disaster into a last-minute victory, it would be the Captain. "You and your men should pull back and regroup outside the city."

"And leave all the fun to you guys? No chance, I'll stay. Liones hasn't been overtaken in the last twenty-five years of my shining carrier, I'll be damned if I let that streak be broken today."

They had nothing else to say, all words of encouragement would have sounded hollow. The two nodded to each other before they turned and went their separate ways.

When King returned to Meliodas and Ban – the latter entertained himself by tossing his Sacred Treasure up and down –, Gowther had joined their side and was briefing the Captain on the newest turn of events.

"… stayed with them to safely escort King Gilthunder and his family out of the city," he said. "She will rejoin us shortly. But I'm afraid all attempts at securing the palace have been futile. It lies in Mordred's hands as we speak. And with the capital's heart, he controls the armory as well. Winning it back will be quite the uphill battle."

"We'll manage, as long as we get to unite the forces of Camelot and the remaining ones of Liones," Meliodas said. But his words lacked reassurance. "Gotta say, Escanor's «Cruel Sun» on our side would be a real asset right now."

"Don't tell him that, it's bad for his ego. Bet he's just letting us wait to prepare his big entrance to save the day."

King couldn't help but wonder, why there was no sign of Diane. The way to the south gates couldn't take her this long, no matter which part of the city she had disappeared to. After descending to meet his fellow Sins at eye level, King posed the question his mind kept turning over and over. "Have none of you seen Diane by now?"

Meliodas shook his head, and Ban shrugged. "If _you_ don't know where she is…"

"I have," Gowther said, and the weight from King's chest lifted – only for it to crush his hopes with Gowther's next words. "She was hurrying from the north-western quarters towards the castle. I tried to warn her about the increased presence of Colossai in the immediate area, but she didn't seem to take notice of me. From what I could tell, she looked troubled, angry even. I wanted to follow her, but Elizabeth's request to inform the Captain without delay was quite strict."

The last couple sentences were a mere blur of intangible words in King's ears as he lost control over his facial features. He needed a ridiculous amount of effort to keep himself suspended in the air. His thoughts were running crazy, chasing for the right dots to connect. Only one reason could convince Diane to stay in that part of the city…

"King? Is there something the matter?" Meliodas asked and exchanged looks with Ban and Gowther as King failed to answer. He could hardly hear them. He searched for the unmistakable light of Diane's heart, but the panic around him, _inside _him buried all other emotions until too many voices screamed at him at the top of their lungs.

"That's where the safehouse is. Ivy was supposed to – I… I should have…," King stuttered, unable to make sense of the shambles of his mind.

Could Mordred know about the safehouse? King had no reason to assume he didn't. Mordred had been to Liones' capital often enough; Ivy or Lance might have mentioned it in passing; King himself couldn't remember whether he had talked about it in Mordred's presence once or twice. Had Mordred fallen so deep that he was willing to turn King's children into pawns in his plan to overthrow Liones?

On the brink of falling victim to his dark thoughts, King reached out to search for the hearts of his family. He silenced all other thoughts and finally broke through. Ivy's inner thoughts – usually vibrant and energetic, if often a little reclusive – were dull, while Aura and Helbram both overflowed with vivid fear. He couldn't even reach out to Cynthia with how vehemently she had shut out the outside world. As for Diane, King could feel nothing but grim determination. They were alive. For the moment.

"Shouldn't Ivy be at the Boar Hat with the others by now?" Ban asked. "She's gotta be alright."

"We didn't make it that far before the Colossai appeared," King said as soon as he was certain his answer wouldn't come out as a mindless scream. "We thought it would be better if they stayed hidden, but if Mordred knows where they are, if he's already captured them, if Diane went after them…" He couldn't bring himself to finish that thought.

But despite how messy his thought process worked, one thing became crystal-clear. He needed to go after Diane and face Mordred upfront if necessary. No matter the cost, no matter the risk.

King turned around midair without finding the will to offer any more explanations and raced towards the royal palace. Meliodas voice carried towards him with the urge to wait, but before he could pass anything beyond, King had left earshot. The towering frame of the palace grew to fill his entire field of view until its shadows swallowed him whole and dragged him deeper into the belly of the beast.

Primal fear for the lives of those he loved fastened his pace and made his heart pound in his chest.

Even though Colossai swarmed the walls around the palace, King managed to pass them unseen. They displayed no intention to hold him back, and he wasn't eager to engage in an avoidable fight. Not when time was racing against him.

Halfway through the deserted castle halls, King felt Diane's thoughts dull out. With gritted teeth and a labored breath, King followed the other guiding signal that violated his tormented mind, the black hole of resolve that had once been Mordred.

The doors of the great hall stood wide open, the heavy oak wood cracked and splintered in many places. King took a fraction of a second to assess the room beyond; his children clustered near the marble pillars stretching from one end of the hall to the other, Diane lying lifeless on the floor while Mordred stood over her.

Mordred had no chance to turn around before King sent Chastifol's spear form forward with a flick of his wrist. The Sacred Treasure to halted a hair's width from the soft flesh of Mordred's throat.

"You will stop this at once," King growled.

"It seems you are still unwilling to kill me," Mordred said. His throat edged across Chastifol's sharp tip while speaking, but not yet enough to draw blood.

In the short month since King had last seen Mordred – during the funeral of his father, the late King Arthur – the last remnants of youthful innocence had been erased from his features and his purple eyes showed a bottomless cold. And yet, despite the full extent of his change displayed so blatantly, King refused to put an end to this war. It would be so easy. One twitch of his fingers was all it would take.

For a few heartbeats, they faced each other in complete absence of sound or movement; King unwilling to proceed and Mordred unable to. Until Aura's soft and frightened voice called out for her father. "Daddy?"

King's eyes shot to his daughter, as all logic was drawn from his mind and parental emotions overwhelmed him with such ferocity that he lost focus for a split second. Chastifol dropped less than an inch, but Mordred saw the diversion and made use of it.

"«Full Potential»," Mordred commanded as soon as he had taken one crucial step back.

The tiny bronze casket on the floor before King, that had waited for these exact words, sprang open as soon as the last syllable passed Mordred's lips. Its magic awoke in an instance. Invisible chains wrapped themselves around King, stole his ability to move or use his magic, imprisoned him in his own body. The casket's incarceration spell kept him suspended midair, but the muscles below his chin remained in stasis. King pushed against the walls of his confinement with magic, with force, with all he had to offer, but the spell never wavered.

"I imagine you remember this little treasure," Mordred said and sidestepped Chastifol that had dropped to the ground as soon as King's control had snapped. "Merlin's magical item number 256, «Prison Casket». She gave it her all on this one, I must say. You and I both know that you will eventually tear yourself free. But fortunately, I'm not asking for eternity."

"What do you want, Mordred?" King hissed.

He needed to buy time. King's magic potential should in theory be sufficient to overcome the prison spell, albeit at the loss of his magic reserves. Since the item had been crafted by Merlin and strengthened by Mordred's magical ability – that enabled him to activate and amplify spells and magical abilities of others at will – King would need to trade a significant amount of his energy to counteract the spell. Likely over a long stretch of time.

Mordred didn't fall for the question. Instead, he turned to address Cynthia, who had watched events unfold without as much as a change in expression. "Cynthia, will you hand over your brother to me for a moment?" he asked. His manner of speech still hummed with the rhythm of the royal court, despite how out of place it sounded.

And Cynthia obeyed. She loosened her grip around Helbram's arm to direct him to Mordred's outstretched hand. Aura struggled in Cynthia's other arm, but to no avail, as Mordred shoved Helbram away from his sisters, into the center of King's vision.

Horror clawed itself into King's heart at the prospect of what was about to happen, what Mordred could do. He shook his head in helpless pleas, but all words of interference died in his sour throat. Helbram's eyes darted between his parents in search for help, but neither were in condition to grant any. The fear radiating from his father's heart disturbed him until tiny hiccups escaped his mouth. He asked for his mother.

In one swift motion, Mordred drew the dagger from his belt and slashed a crimson line across Helbram's throat. His life light went out in an instance. As Mordred released his grip around Helbram's shoulder, his lifeless body tumbled to the floor, and all King could do was stare as blood spouted from his son to form a crimson pond on the immaculate marble tiles. Helbram's gaze lingered on King in death, in search for help that didn't exist. Aura's cries echoed through the unmoved stone vaults.

Faced with the visually macabre consequences of his deeds, Mordred contemplated, as if he expected judgement to strike him down on the spot. Nothing happened.

Cynthia was next. Mordred denied her the mercy of a quick death. Again, and again and over again, his metal gloves connected with Cynthia's body. King's screams left him unfazed; threats, prayers, pleads were met with nothing but silence. At the eighth punch, Cynthia lost consciousness as her body shielded her mind from the trauma, at the twenty-first one, her presence faded. Irretrievably.

Cold sweat trailed down King's spine, soaked his clothes, and increased the tremor his muscles wanted to act out but couldn't because of the restraints of «Prison Casket». And no matter how much energy King threw at the spell work, it remained as steady as unforgiving cliffs against the surf. In the space between two clashes of King's magic and that of the casket, he noticed his breathing hitch and spiral out of his control.

But the nightmare continued, he wasn't allowed to wake up, and Mordred dragged Aura to the scaffold next. With the way he buried his dagger into her abdomen, it would take minutes before she would bleed out before King's eyes. Long enough so that he held onto the illusory hope to save her with «Pollen Garden» if he pushed hard enough against the casket's chains.

King had felt the hearts of his children long before they had been capable of concrete thoughts, long before they had seen the light of day. He had loved them before he had set eyes upon them, and other than Diane they had become his primary source of motivation. The wish to keep them safe had determined every action he had taken since their birth. Helbram's first words had filled him with joy, Aura's fist flight had filled him pride, Cynthia's first steps with a burning desire to lay the world at her feet. And now they were slaughtered one after the other by a man King had once trusted as an apprentice, as an ally, as a friend.

When Mordred turned to Diane, King started to beg.

He promised Mordred Liones, Camelot, the Fairy Realm, the entirety of Britannia, everything he could and couldn't offer in return for Diane's life. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he pleaded to be killed instead of her.

The haze of numbed pain filled Diane's eyes, and behind the veil she was barely conscious enough to recognize him. Blood leaked out of an open wound on her forehead and ran down her cheeks, a perverted mirror image of King's tears. His voice sounded hoarse and broken when he asked Diane to look at nothing else but him. If he could at least spare her the sight of her children's lifeless bodies only a few feet away... Diane answered to his begging, no longer in control of her mind, her spirit on the verge of shattering into a million beautiful fragments.

"Harlequin," she muttered, and King gave her a tear-soaked smile.

Before at long last Mordred ended her suffering.

The love of his life was dead. All because her death served Mordred's plan to overthrow all those who had pushed him aside one to many times. All because without her, King had no reason left to stand against Mordred.

In perfect irony of fate, King's last desperate assault tore a hole into the tapestry of spell work that had bound him and set him free. Too late.

A fearful squeal caused King to raise his head, alongside Mordred. The ghost of determination fled back into King's body. Someone was still left who he could protect from Mordred's bloodstained clutches.

"You shouldn't have been forced to see this," Mordred said. All his attention rested on Ivy as she kneeled in a film of her sibling's blood.

With all the power left in him, hidden in the farthest depths, King fought and overcame the trauma of his lungs that kept him short of oxygen. He reached out to Chastifol with a quivering physical and a steeled but broken mental hand. The massive spear flew past Mordred's head to hover next to Ivy, ready to defend her.

King rose higher into the air smelling of metal and blood and duplicated Chastifol two times over. "Ivy, go now! Get to Ban and don't stop! You hear me?" For the first time in a long time, he knew what to do.

A barrage of swords rained down on Mordred, and forced him to concentrate all his thoughts into evading and deflecting the onslaught from an opponent he had thought defeated. Ivy staggering to her feet in King's periphery, picked Gideon from the ground, and fled out of the great hall. King gave into the black dots of exhaustion filling up his vision for a brief moment.

The further Ivy went, the more difficulty King had in maintaining control over the first and ninth form of Chastifol he had sent out to follow her. «Invisible Shield», a mantel of deflecting magic cast to envelop a person, was one of the most demanding of Chastifol's forms and paired with the increase in distance and King's battered condition, the spell feasted on his reserves with a hunger that knew no restraint.

When he noticed the absence of another wave of «Increase» targeted at him, Mordred closed in on King to finish what he had set out to accomplish. And yet, King had no energy to keep himself suspended in the air. No energy to fight back. No energy to delay the inevitable. The words 'Ivy will live, Ivy has to live' repeated themselves in King's head like a mantra, the final prayers of a dying man.

Sword raised and ready to strike, Mordred crossed the last step separating them.

* * *

The lack of a proper fight made the entire dilemma worse for Ban. He tried to shut them out, but the low, thunder-like sounds whenever a building fell victim under the feet of the Colossai and the urgent screams for backup sounded by what little of the Holy Knights was left tracked him down with foolproof precision. The cacophony had long dug a nasty hole into his stomach. Sure, the Captain had a reason to station them clustered around the south gate, to secure their backup, keep an escape route open, and whatnot, but logic didn't help ease Ban's discomfort. King hadn't returned since he had rushed off to follow Diane, and Ban had no way of knowing what had happened to him in the meantime.

"They're both capable adults, they'll manage," Meliodas said.

"Against Mordred? I doubt that."

Frustrated, Ban kicked a perfectly harmless stone. The tiny piece of rock hopped over the desolate plaza with a sharp clack every time it touched the cobblestone before it came to rest somewhere out of view. King's face, white with fear, surfaced back to the forefront of Ban's thoughts, and no matter how hard he tried, he failed to suppress the image. He shouldn't have gone to face Mordred alone. King knew better than that. But if this had been about Elaine or Lance, would Ban have allowed reason to stop him? When did he ever allow reason to stop him?

"Shouldn't one of us make sure they will be alright?" Gowther asked. His eyes were fixed on the line of houses between which King had disappeared. In an endless repetition that was about to drive Ban crazy, he tapped his fingers against his chin in complete absence of rhythm or melody. As if that could bring either of them back.

"We need to make sure the gates will be open when Escanor gets here," Meliodas repeated the empty purpose of his inactions. Ban worked his jaw.

Somewhere in the distance someone's panicked screams were cut short.

"Fine, you'll do that. I'm gonna go after them," Ban said, tired of waiting and the nagging uncertainty of what was happening in the capital around them.

"No." The simple order came so unexpected and was filled with such uncompromising steel, that Ban stopped before he had placed one step.

"What?"

"You heard what I said," Meliodas said in the commanding tone the Captain hadn't used in ages. "Gowther, could you scout ahead a little and see if we're getting company from the Colossai? I don't want them to hit us while we're blindfolded. Stay in sight, just in case."

Eyes wide with disbelief, Gowther looked back and forth between Meliodas and Ban. But when Meliodas showed no intention to take back his words or rephrase them as less dismissive, Gowther nodded and left Ban and Meliodas to themselves.

"Ban, I need you here to fend off the Colossai with me once they decide they're done with the palace. And they will show up here sooner rather than later. You know I can't hold them off alone. We have to trust King and Diane to fight their fight."

Ban thought he had trouble hearing. "So, you're suggesting we just stand by while they take on Mordred, a delusive freak who you and King spent all that time on to make him as formidable as possible? Are you listening to yourself?"

"King should've known better than to go alone…" Meliodas said, but if he intended to follow up his words with hollow explanation, Ban wouldn't let him.

"Now he's the one at fault?" Ban snarled. If Gowther heard them argue, so be it. "Mordred has his CHILDREN for all he knows! What if this was Katrina we're talking about? Think about that before you make judgement calls."

Meliodas gaze turned to ice, hardened to keep the serious threat boiling beneath the green surface locked up.

"Leave my child out of this," he said, each syllable intent to poison Ban.

On the brink of snapping. Ban retreated from the slippery ground had set foot on and swallowed the comment about Meliodas proving his point with his reaction. This was the one subject better left untouched. Even when Meliodas was playing dumb and unreasonable.

"Cap'n, you know I'll always got your back, no matter how idiotic you behave sometimes. But King doesn't have someone to keep an eye on him like that; his best friend's already six feet under. So forgive me if I'm not willing to tell Elaine that her brother and nephew and nieces died because I had to guard a stupid-ass gate." Meliodas' expression sunk into turmoil, but Ban managed to look away without losing his own face.

"You think I'm not worried about them?" Meliodas said as Ban made his way towards the main avenue connecting the palace with the outer gates. He gnawed at the inside of his cheeks at every step. "It's driving me crazy, okay? But without these stupid gates, we won't hold a candle against Mordred, and guess where he's gonna go after he's done with us and Liones!"

Ban forced himself to keep his pace even and his breathing controlled. "As soon as she gets here, you'll have Elizabeth to help you out," he said, before adding, "I see ya around."

"Ban – Ban, wait!"

He pretended to no longer listen.

* * *

Liones had never been this pitiful to look at. The plot to kill the Great Holy Knight Zaratras had razed one block of houses, and ten years later the Demon-possessed Hendrickson had displayed little care to prevent civilian casualties and property damage when he tried to overthrow the kingdom. And the New Holy War had forged its fair share of scars into the cityscape as well.

All that seemed like a harmless passing of seasons in comparison.

Wherever his eyes trailed, Ban was met with destruction. Buildings that had stood the test of time and war for decades fell into ruins. Fires smoldered in their exposed skeletons to consume what little hadn't fallen victim to the Colossai. Rubble blocked the streets Ban's feet carried him through. Other routes were impossible to trespass, where the earth itself had cracked open to reveal the depths below. And over all of Liones hung a thick blanket of ash and smoke, mixed with the herb scent of dead bodies in the first stages of decay.

What little fight the men of Liones had put up against the overwhelm of the invaders had died down, and the sounds of battle expired with the defenders. This part of the city had long fallen to the enemy; the bodies of Holy Knights scattered in Ban's path proved as much. He thanked the nameless high might that had discouraged Lance from spending the afternoon with more training alongside his fellow Holy Knights. Otherwise he might have been swept up in the megalomaniacal wish to serve his part in the battle.

Ban passed the mangled remains of a knight, only identifiable under the wall that had crushed him by the metallic shimmer of his ravaged armor, and decided to hold a long and serious conversation with his son about the downsides of his career choice. Assuming he would see the other side of this hellhole alive.

He had entered the shadow of Liones' tower-shaped palace with slowed steps, in expectation to run into some Colossai this close to their current nest, when the sounds of a living being assaulted his ears. His path had led him through so many streets of silence, he had forgotten how voices sounded. Someone was condemning the evil of this world with wordless screams, interluded by violent sobbing, almost like a recurring hiccup. In anticipation of another traumatizing sight, Ban rounded a corner. But any desire or capability to move abandoned him right after.

Ivy stood in the middle of the road, shaken from tears that failed to escape her eyelids. Blood covered her hands and soaked her skirt and stocking. And she screamed. She screamed and sobbed, swayed back and forth like a blade of grass in a hurricane, until Ban placed his hands on her shoulders to stabilize her. But when she lifted her eyes, her gaze went straight through him.

"Ivy, where're the others? Still at the castle?" Ban asked as soon as the shaking in her lean figure had eased. A better father would have found soothing words to calm her, King would have, but Ban's thoughts were vacant of paternal support.

Ivy rocked her head from one side to the other before her eyes – Diane's eyes – drifted sideways to the ground next to Ban. He increased his grip around Ivy's paralyzed form.

On the cobblestone lay the first form of King's Sacred Treasure, Chastifol. Its metal surface lacked the familiar aura of energy that linked the spear to its owner. On top of that, the massive spear King used to control in battle since the New Holy War, since he had grown his wings, was reduced to its base form. A simple bar of silver metal with minimal decorations in gold and blue. Adequate for a human in size and strength. Not for the Fairy King.

The implications were almost blinding.

"Hey, Ivy, listen to me." The calm in Ban's voice forced her to look at him, a calm he didn't feel. "Meliodas is waiting at the southern gates, you'll be there in a couple minutes max. Tell him I'll be running late if you see him. Get out of the city, best to the Boar Hat." Worry and an unspoken question lingered in her eyes. "I'll be right behind you. Now run."

Carefully, afraid to see her shatter without his hands to keep her together, Ban let go of Ivy and shoved her forward. Ivy's left hand was holding onto Gideon as if for dear life.

She backed away, kept eye contact for longer than necessary, before she turned on her heels at the crossroad and scurried down the street towards the Sins' last stronghold: the same stupid-ass gates Ban found grim pleasure in imagining the structure burned to bits.

His own steps carried him to the castle, a newly created monument of evil. The possibilities of what he might find there weighed heavy on every ash-filled breath he took in.

* * *

Their hands would forever remain two inches apart.

King's eyes, dead and unseeing, were locked onto Diane's lifeless body, his fingers outstretched towards her, almost reaching her but never quite. The diagonal slash across his torso had claimed his life beforehand. Blood was dripping out of the wound into the crimson lake the pair had fallen into; rigor mortis had yet to take effect.

Diane looked even worse; the stains of torture had ripped open the texture of her skin wherever fabric left the wounded flesh exposed. At least Ban was spared the daggers through his resolve that would have been her eyes on him. She had closed them before the final breath had escaped her lips.

Cynthia, Aurora, and Helbram lay on the floor, massacred by a force their parents had failed to protect them from. Their youthful faces, distorted by the surprise or agony of death, made Ban recoil, sickened to the core. In each and every one of them he saw Elaine.

Like an otherworldly archangel of death, Mordred stood over them. The sun edging through the stained-glass windows painted an ever-shifting pattern of colorful, broken specks on his features. King's blood ran in thin lines over the edge of his longsword.

"Bastard," Ban snarled and increased his grip around Courechouse. The multi-section staff gave him hold where nothing else did. "You're gonna go to hell for this."

The threat left Mordred unfazed. "Would you be so kind as to tell me where you've sent Ivy to? I assume you ran into her on your way here?"

"Whatever your sick mind wants of her, you'll have to get through me first. What has King done to you that makes you think he deserved this? What has Ivy done?!"

Mordred's eyes widened in surprise. "Nothing," he replied with a somber look at his boots plastered with blood. "Nothing more or less than the rest of the Sins has. I don't relish his death or that of his family. If there had been a way to prevent this, I would have gone there. But those with power cling to what elevates them above the rest with a ferocity not easily broken in life. For the sake of peace, he had to die. As all the Sins have to die." With these words, Mordred shifted his stance, rearranged his footing, and hunched forward ever so slightly to counter Ban's inevitable attack.

And Ban didn't keep him waiting for long. Without a leader to throw orders at them, the Colossai would end their warfare against the city, in the best case while there was enough left to be called a city. And even if Mordred's death would have no effect on the outcome of the larger battle, Ban could make him pay for what he had done.

He threw himself at his opponent and split Courechouse to hit Mordred from a higher distance and in less predictable angles. But no matter where Ban desired to attack, Mordred knew where to raise or to drop his sword to deflect, and when to evade a hit. His exceptional footwork always carried him out of reach, and he never remained in one place for too long. In spite of the slippery surface of the blood-covered tiles, he danced and twirled and sidestepped around Ban with movements studied for so long that he had ingrained them into his muscles.

Ban cursed and thrusted his Sacred Treasure forward with more vehemence. These stronger blows forced Ban to cut down on the unpredictability factor, but at least he could lock his opponent's position. Compelled to block each blow aimed at his body, Mordred held his longsword in a diagonal line to meet Ban's attack. At this angle, all force was redirected to the ground before his feet. A minimal swipe, sometimes backhanded, was all it took.

From time to time, Ban recognized Meliodas' teaching in the way Mordred directed his weapon. Both an advantage and a serious problem. While Ban could use this knowledge to identify and thereby predict some of his opponent's fighting patterns, he had never outmaneuvered the Captain's style. The quick, occasional blows in between a series of ricochets with minimal effort remained unpredictable to him.

If the fight continued like this, they would end up with a tie. Which begged the question: Who would make a fatal mistake first?

Ban ended up being the one. The surroundings of the fight pushed into the forefront of his mind with each step and each strike. Too often was he reminded of whose blood his boots slipped on and whose bodies he and Mordred navigated through.

The picture of Elaine shut out the emotional assault knocking at the insides of his skull for only a little while. Ban's desperate mind hammered the wish to protect her and Lance by putting an end to Mordred's blood-soaked path into his mental walls. But the longer Mordred drained out the fight, the more often Ban saw Elaine instead of Aura lying dead on the floor to his feet. He imagined her to experience the torture Diane had to endure. His head spun from the odor of death filling his nose. Death and burned wood. The taste of sickly-sweet liquid and bloody lips.

One single misstep was all it took to invite Mordred's counterattack. Without his immortality, Ban was as powerless against the might of a blade as any mortal human.

The great hall of Liones became his mausoleum.

* * *

The loop she thought to have escaped had closed its greedy hands around her throat to pull her back into its depths. Fate had the habit of repeating itself. Again, and again and over again.

She knew her wounds were fatal, had known as much since the hole in her side had stopped hurting and radiated numbness instead.

Elizabeth remembered dying. Not every single time had left a memory, sometimes death had clawed its fangs into her before she realized its arrival. But she had repeated enough instances in which she had clung onto life for a few precious, pointless seconds longer to know what it felt like to lose the battle. The coldness in her hands. The effort to pull in another raspy breath. The dull aching in her chest.

But this time, no curse would bring her back into this world once her heart sounded its final beat.

"It'll all be okay, you'll be okay, just hold on a little longer," Meliodas muttered into her ear. He buried his face deeper into her hair. The coldness of his cheek increased her shivers.

Diane, King, Ban – none of them had returned. Meliodas broken tone when he had told Elizabeth about their disappearance echoed in her head when she concentrated. In that moment, he had given up hope for their survival. He merely fought to make his peace with the fact that he had led them into their demise.

Elizabeth had wished for nothing but to spare him further trauma. But on top of that, she had let her guard down in the belief that she could handle the Colossai heading her way. A delusive thought.

As she had crawled through the alley back to the gates, while three Colossai crumbled behind her, while red liquid poured out of the hole above her right hipbone in a river that seemed to know no end, Meliodas had abandoned his position to rush towards her. The onslaught of Colossai advancing from the royal palace had crushed what little defenses had remained. They had torn Gowther to pieces so tiny not even Merlin could have reassembled them. Then the Holy Knights in their wake, members of Mordred's inner circle of Knights of the Round Table, had shut the gates. With the metallic clank, all hopes of Escanor's troops arriving in time had shattered. An illusion swept away by the harsh winds of reality. All the while, Meliodas had held Elizabeth in his arms, and his tears had soaked her hair.

"I'll make sure you'll be alright, Elizabeth, just hold on a little longer."

She wished to reassure him or tell him how much she loved him, but the cold had long stolen her voice. Despite the throbbing in her lips, she mustered the strength to form these three crucial words. The chapped flesh brushed his cheek. Cheeks as cold as memories of war-torn, smoldering battlefield three millennia ago.

Meliodas raised his head to look at her, and through the dark creeping at the edge of her vision and his tears, Elizabeth saw the black lines dancing in his iris. His well-build walls decayed under the fangs of sorrow. He was about to break the vow he had given her and the other Sins twenty-five years ago, the vow he had renewed with wholehearted conviction upon a winter day sixteen years ago.

Now that he was looking at her, Elizabeth formed the words 'I love you' one final time. He shook his head and buried it in her hair once more.

"You can't leave me, not again. Not now." Demonic magic radiated from his skin like desert heat.

The heat of an open fire back home at the Boar Hat.

Elizabeth let his darkness envelop her until it filled the entirety of her world.

The dark welcomed her with a warm embrace.


	15. Calm in between storms

As Ivy finished retelling the events of The Fall, she was met with silence as an answer.

She wasn't sure what she had imagined, but the lack of a response she received aided the uncertainty gnawing in her chest. She had owed them the truth, yes, but some things were too horrific to be spoken out loud, and the others might have been better off if she had locked these memories away. The pale face of Katrina stared up at her, and Gaius shifted in Katrina's shadow. At least from Errin, Ivy had expected _something_, an outburst or a shout of denial, but she sat frozen without a hint of emotion to distort her features.

Ivy told herself to feel nothing, distance herself from the scene and the images in her head, but as so often, she failed. She was about to give away under the urge to flee when Lance stood up, walked the couple steps of empty space between them, kneeled down, and put his arms around her. Not a single sound escaped his mouth.

It was strange. Back home, before Mordred's invasion, Ivy had met Lance with little other than lighthearted antagonism and endless mockery, sometimes interjected with a serious fight and a reconciliation afterwards. She had thought he harbored no desire to change this. But for the third time in two weeks, they embraced each other like friends. Like family.

Ivy clung to the hold his lean shoulders provided. For once, she didn't mind to appear weak in front of him or anyone else. Instead she leaned closer until the faint, ghostly scent of lemon mint of his skin tickled her nose – a hint of his Fairy side.

"We're gonna kick Mordred's ass for what he's done," Lance said with an infectious smile. "I mean, we're already halfway there, and without his army, we can take him out, no problem. Sounds like a plan?"

"Sounds like a plan," Ivy said and managed a smile to meet his.

"I'm so sorry, Ivy," Katrina said, nestled into the emerged space between Lance and Ivy, and flung her arms around Ivy's midsection. A bit overwhelmed, Ivy patted the back of her head, which promptly sent long strands to fall into Katrina's face. "And even if they don't say it, I'm sure Errin and Gaius feel the same way," she added.

"You have my sincere condolences," Gaius said, and his stilted choice of words almost made Ivy chuckle. Errin gave an affirmative nod, small but resolute.

After so many days on edge, Ivy took a long breath and allowed her shoulders to relax. Lance was right, wasn't he? Now that the Colossai were dealt with, only Mordred's most loyal servitude knights remained as assets for him to use, and they in no way stacked up to the Sins. As for Mordred himself, he was a single individual. He could be stopped.

A sound from her right startled Ivy, and she squinted to pierce the darkness with her eyes. The village and the festivity ground with the Sins remained obscured by shadows, but the slender figure midway did not.

Gowther stood in the open, a porcelain watchman who caught the kids sneaking outside past their bed time. The rim of his glasses caught the moonlight and hid his eyes behind a visor of silver-grey obscurity. The expression below remained enigmatic.

Ivy felt awfully vulnerable; she should have made sure that the Sins were asleep before sharing such delicate information. If Gowther had listened to even a fraction of the story, he was guaranteed to know who they were and where they came from. All careful planning and deceiving rendered pointless thanks to her inattentiveness.

Aware of the eyes on him, Gowther placed a handful attentive steps towards them. "I didn't intend to overhear you talk, but with how loud you were, I couldn't help myself," he said. "To avoid confusion, I have heard more than enough, and I realize what this means. I am… sorry about what all of you have gone through."

Considering that he had found out about his imminent death and those of his friends from the strangers revealing themselves to be descendants of those same friends a mere minute ago, Gowther held himself remarkably well. His gaze drifted between the youths in search for the visual resemblance that would validate their story. The small nose Katrina had inherited from her father, the sharpness of Lance's chin, a precise replica of Ban's, and the round face Ivy shared with her mother.

"I should have noticed sooner," he said and shook his head in astonishment. "I suppose Merlin already knows?"

"Most of it, yeah," Lance said. "So far she's the only one though."

"Will you tell the others?" Katrina's voice dripped with dread. She, much like Ivy, had heard too many horror stories from Gaius and Merlin about changing the past only to ruin the present. 'Success in this field is untested terrain' as Gaius liked to say.

Gowther shook his head once more. "The less someone knows about what is to come the better – that's what Merlin would say. And she has rarely been wrong. Though I am quite curious as to how you have managed to come this far, and without any help no less."

"In the future, Merlin will develop a magical item with which it is possible to alter the flow of time. As for her reasoning, we can only guess," Gaius explained and extended his palm. The purple edges of the Time Crystal glimmered within.

Gowther eyed the item as tough it might jump at him any second. "Do you know, what this is?" he asked, dead serious all of a sudden.

They shook their heads in unison, and Gaius added 'nothing precise about its origin'. The response seemed to relieve Gowther, but he showed no desire to further inspect the item and remained at a conspicuous distance until Gaius closed his hand and stored the crystal in the deep pockets of his coat.

Gowther relaxed his shoulders. "The less you use it, the better. But then again, without it you won't be able to make it back to your time, I assume."

Ivy nodded. The prospect of seeing Katrina freak out due to the crystal's manipulation a second time brought back the tension she had thought to have escaped. But they had yet to find another way – if one existed in the first place. "We're not exactly spoiled for choice here. And there's still the chance that we've messed up time too much already, now that you and Merlin know about future events…"

Out of the blue, Lance snapped his fingers as figurative lights turned on in his head. "But we can change that too, right? Gowther, with «Invasion» you can alter people's memories, correct? You've done it with Mael too, back during the first Holy War."

"Yes," Gowther said, "but I wanted to never again meddle with the feelings of others like that. I understand why it was necessary to manipulate his memories and those of others regarding him in order to end the war and preserve the lives of thousands. Yet that does not change the fact that I stole Mael's life away from him. Nor does it forgive the times I repeated this sin since then."

To Ivy's surprise, Gowther's eyes rested on her then, a wordless apology shrouded behind the reflecting surface of his glasses.

"I… we understand you're hesitant. It was just another one of Lance's stupid ideas, anyway," she said. "We knew what we were getting into when asking our parents for help. I guess we'll just hope for the best."

"Even if Gowther were to successfully alter the memories of the Seven Deadly Sins of us –ideally including his own – there would remain a high probability of failure," Gaius put in. "Memories are among the most malleable yet enduring concepts this world knows of. They could regain their memories or fragments of them in spite of a well-conducted spell. In the worst-case scenario, some of them might start to question their sanity or the validity of reality that surrounds them."

Ivy made a face of distain, and Lance scowled next to her. Gaius pessimism outclassed what other people collected throughout a lifetime.

Lance raised his hands. "Okay, okay, I get it, bad idea."

"Don't believe that I do not want to help you. I very much do. I owe your parents more than I can ever repay them." After a moment of ideals fighting for supremacy, made visible by Gowther's eyes shifting back and forth between Lance, Katrina, and Ivy, he continued. "I cannot make any promises, but I will think about what I can do to aid you."

That was as good of an offer as Ivy had hoped for, and she thanked Gowther with a smile. Katrina went one step further and put her tiny arms around him in her own display of gratitude. Gowther blinked in an attempt to shake the illusion. But Katrina kept her arms wrapped around his torso and snuggled her head against his shirt.

Ivy knew Gowther on a mere surface level, and they had never shared more than a few words outside the company of the other Sins – even though he was a close friend of her parents and Cynthia's godfather. But as he was standing there against the dark, open field, with Katrina clinging to his chest, overwhelmed by the warmth she displayed towards him, Ivy wished she had put more effort into getting to know him.

"I'm so tired, I could collapse and not wake up before next spring," Lance said after a few moments of awkward silence and shooed Gaius and Katrina to the festivity ground. Alongside with Gowther, they disappeared into the night. Light steps on cushions of grass were the only sounds they made.

Lance looked at Ivy and waited for her to make a move. With a reassuring nod and a gesture to indicate that he should go ahead without her, Ivy sent him away. Her eyes found Errin's lonely silhouette in the dark. She stood motionless atop the gentle hill, and a gust of wind caught hold of her hair. Other than that, she might have turned into a statue of granite and silence.

After she waited for a moment to see if her unresponsiveness might drive Ivy away, Errin opened her mouth. "I only want to know if there is a reason for what Mordred did. Anything he saw in Liones or the Sins to mark them as a threat. Something that could explain why he turned on them. Mordred never does things without a reason…"

Desperation leaked off of Errin's every word, the fleeting hope in them not quite died down, still brimming with the flickers of loyalty towards Mordred.

"There's nothing I can tell you about him that you haven't seen in him already. And I'd be lying if I said I'm sorry for you. Mordred has taken my family, and no matter what drove him towards that, I will never forgive him." Ivy choked. "I don't know him as well as you do, but I thought I knew him well enough. Knew about his reluctance to train gay in and day out, and about how proud he was to finally create something of his own with the Knights of the Round Table. I thought there was nothing more important to him than becoming a leading figure of Camelot one could look up to. It seems I was wrong."

"I always hated how well you two got along."

The admission lacked the tiniest hint of anger or sadness. And still Errin's words made Ivy shiver in her skin. The cold of the night and the howling winds tearing at her clothes seemed warm by comparison.

She bit her lip and walked away. All the while, Errin's gaze lingered like icy fingers on her back.

* * *

"Now that that's settled, we can finally have our disbandment party!"

Meliodas seemed to have shaken whatever had troubled him yesterday and had returned to his less serious self; Lance thought this persona fit him much better. But not all Sins shared his sentiment on the matter.

"Doesn't last evening count as a replacement?" King asked. He was hovering midair next to Diane, and the sudden theft of his sleep left his face drowsy rather than angered as he crossed his arms.

"Nope," Meliodas replied with a reproachful wave of his finger. "Ban owes me a full dinner, and I'm not gonna let that slide just 'cause there were some minor disturbances."

"How you and Elizabeth haven't starved by now never ceases to amaze me," Ban said.

"Don't try to change subjects, this has nothing to do with anything. Plus, that was a Captain's order!"

Ban and King groaned. "Ya only play that card when it suits ya _real _well. No one else gonna say something?!"

"Oh, I think this will turn out quite amusing," Merlin said with a characteristic variant of her superior smile. "And with five years having passed, we can consider this our first full anniversary."

"Elaine's gonna end me," Ban said and stared down the stone in front of him as though the piece of uninspired rock was responsible for all the injustice in this universe.

"It will only be one day longer," Elizabeth said and freed one hand from Meliodas' grip to pat Ban's shoulder. "And I'm sure it will be wonderful to have something to celebrate without any worries of world-ending proportions on our minds. We have looked forward to this for weeks…"

"Yeah, yeah, fine then. Not that I got much of a choice here." The words 'Captain's orders' Ban repeated under his breath were loud enough for Lance to catch it. And the hissed curse would have made him grin too, but the entire conversation had been little more than background stereo in his ears because of a serious case of sleep-deprivation.

Even after Ivy had returned to the campsite to smack down her head in an attempt to silence the chaos raging in her mind and get a dose of dreamless sleep, Lance had failed to keep his eyes closed for long. Any plans to reason with Mordred had shattered once he had learned the full story; Mordred's sanity had jumped ship wholly and irretrievably. No matter how Lance spun the wheels, they would have to face that maniac once they returned to their time. And this confrontation knew no more than two outcomes, regardless of how little they might like it. And Errin didn't like it one bit.

She was sitting in Diane's shadow, and the thoughts ran through her head with such noise, one could almost hear their cries for attention. Since Meliodas had yanked them out of the bliss of sleep, when the sun had been little more than a cusp of light blue at the horizon, she hadn't opened her mouth once and observed those around her with halfhearted interest.

Lance suppressed a yawn by frowning until the reflex was silenced and followed the Sins as they made plans for their anniversary later today through a veil of tiredness.

Sooner than he liked, Lance and his fellows would have to depart from the Sins to return to the made-up hole of a village they had come from. And with no other options at hand, they would have to play out that lie, even though Liones was their destination in the future. Because, for as advanced and peculiar the Time Crystal was, space as supposed to time did not bend to its magic. And if Gaius didn't manage a serious upgrade of his teleportation magic in the span of a few hours, they would be forced to walk the distance between Camlann and Liones, maybe all the way to Camelot. On foot. Again.

"We will need to make a detour to Liones regardless," Gowther said as Lance eclipsed his wandering thoughts to let his mind comprehend spoken words. "I imagine we don't have the supplies necessary to support five additional people. Not to mention the resources we need when we assume Gilthunder and Margaret join us at the last second like yesteryear."

"Yeah, and I kinda forgot to close the door to our booze storage too. So we better make sure we're stocked on that as well," Meliodas said. "King, that's your job."

"Why am I not surprised about this?"

"I'll give you a list. And Escanor can help ya with the booze. He at least has some semblance of taste for it."

With a lengthy delay, Lance picked up on what Gowther's words hinted at – Ivy's nudges to his elbow certainly helped to get his gears turning, though he would no doubt end up with green marks because of it. "Wait, you mean you're inviting us to your anniversary party?!" he asked, and the absurdity of the idea made his voice climb an octave.

"Of course we do, silly!" Diane answered. "All of you are great company, and after all you've been through, you deserve some downtime and a celebration."

"I'd make it Captain's orders, but I guess that doesn't work on you," Meliodas said and overheard Ban growling '_Now_ all of a sudden'. "So, I'll just give ya an informal invitation to join."

"We don't want to pressure you if you prefer to return home already," Elizabeth added and heaped Gaius, Ivy and Lance, and finally Errin and Katrina with warm smiles. "But we would greatly appreciate you staying with us until at least tomorrow morning." Sincere nods from the Sins accompanied her words.

Katrina's eyes practically begged Lance to accept the invitation on their behalf, and a quick glance at Gaius and Errin confirmed that they had no plans to give concrete statements – Gaius was captivated by his book, and Errin's focus still rested inwards. Lance exchanged a look with Ivy before he decided on an answer.

"In that case, we'd be honored to join."

.*:*.

When Merlin had teleported them back to the Boar Hat – long before the local villagers had a chance to further impose their hospitality onto them – and everyone had adjusted to the change in environment, they were met with quite the surprise.

Elaine floated with crossed arms in front of the tavern, and her simple white dress billowed out thanks to a not-at-all natural gust. To perfect the picture, death glares sprayed like fireworks out of her eyes. Lance choked on his panic as his mother approached them; the Demon King himself couldn't have looked more menacing.

But the universe showed mercy, and Lance luckily wasn't the subject of Elaine's wrath. Instead she rushed forward to grab the collar of her brother and put her angered face close enough to distort his eyelashes with her breath.

"which part of two days do you not understand?!" Elaine screamed and shook King with the fury of a personified hurricane.

"Hey, Elaine, nice to see you," Ban said with a cautious smile, but she only regarded him with another furious look.

"Oh, I'll get back to _you_ soon enough," she said. The underlying threat shut Ban's mouth, and Elaine turned back to King. "You said, I'd only have to keep the Forest save for _two days_ _at most_ and that you would be back to do _your_ job by then and that there was nothing to worry about. And what happens after two days? Nothing! No message, no report, nothing. Nothing but dead silence to keep me company. And when I get here to see if you were all passed out drunk, you had disappeared, and no one could tell me where on this forsaken earth you had disappeared to. Last time you went away and left me in charge, you didn't come back for SEVEN HUNDRET YEARS, Harlequin! So for your sake, I hope you have a _really _good excuse for this!"

King stared at Elaine, unable to form an excuse or any words at all. Lucky for him, Elizabeth jumped in to save the situation. "Elaine, we wanted to inform you right away, but with how troubling things were the past days, we couldn't find time for it," she said. "Still, we were being unfair, and I apologize for that. If you don't mind, I would like to introduce you to our new friends."

At least partway appeased, Elaine released her grip around King's throat to take in the five strangers. For Lance's liking, her gaze lingered on him a little too long, pierced right through his skin with gold-colored dissecting needles until he winced. She of all people had a habit of knowing what thoughts distressed him when he himself had buried them so deep that he couldn't remember them. The clock ticked down the final seconds of Lance's existence; she would have everything figured out in the blink of an eye. Anytime now…

Then she made a small 'aha' sound –full of discontent – and shifted her anger towards Ban.

He rolled his shoulders. "What Elizabeth said."

A definite mistake. Elain took in a deep, controlled breath and raised her hand, about to send him flying with the flick of her wrist.

"Well, uhm, actually, we'd like to invite you to our little disbanding party," Ban rambled at the last second. "We, I'd love to have you."

That did the trick, as Elaine dispelled the magic of her wings and flung around Ban's neck before her bare feet touched the ground. A big smile adorned her face all the while.

Lance grinned, moved by their display of affection – and glad to have escaped a life-threatening attack of his mother.

.*:*.

Meliodas liquor stocks had indeed been raided – Lance had the suspicion his father had his fingers in this particular pie –, so the search for supplies required most of the early hours of the day. Elizabeth forbid the guests to do as little as one turn of a hand, much to Meliodas' dismay as he was running out of people to assign to outstanding tasks faster than he liked. Katrina still managed to sneak after King and Escanor to help them out.

For Lance, the unexpected downtime presented the ideal opportunity to collect his thoughts without drifting too deep into the raging current better known as Mordred. At first, Lance planned to challenge Gowther to a game of chess with Meliodas' old, dusty set of figures, which cracked as soon as one looked at them funny. But the tavern owner wasn't the least bit thrilled and ordered Gowther back to cleaning the tavern room with Elizabeth before they had placed their figures. And since he knew how much Ivy detested the game and Gaius was noticeably untraceable, Lance buried that idea.

On the porch outside, he stumbled into Errin. She was sitting at the edge of wooden terrace with dangling legs and a vacant expression. Her sword rested in her lap. Somewhere close by, a redbreast chirped a tune.

"Let me guess, you're not over Mordred and are trying to figure out how you'll save him from us once we'll get back home," Lance said and plopped down next to her.

Errin considered him with a venomous glare before making sure no one overheard them talk. "And what does it matter to you?" she hissed.

"Well, for once you make us all look like ungrateful pricks with how you're acting. And I'm already working my way through a scenario in which you and Ivy claw at each other's throats thanks to your inability to talk with each other. And since I'm the peacekeeper in this merry troop, the scenario isn't fun to imagine. _But_, mostly, I'm curious if you got any input that could help."

Errin's eyes widened before she resumed to inspect her sword. With more force than required, she sheathed and unsheathed the blade, accompanied by a protesting cling. The metal reflected the sunlight onto her face, and her expression disappeared behind a streak of brightness.

"I don't know anymore," she said after a while. "I've been beside Mordred all my life – but with everything I heard Ivy say about him, I'm not sure I know him anymore. Or if I ever knew him. But regardless, I can't bring myself to hate him."

Lance, surprised by such honesty, fumbled with a response and allowed for the bird's song and the smell of fresh paint to fill the silence between them.

"I can't say I know how it feels," he said at last, afraid to drive Errin back into her shell. "But I have people I want to save just as much. I wanna tell my dad that I didn't leave home because of him, and I wanna see Aura's smile again. I want Ivy to have her family back and Katrina to be with her parents. I can't let them down. I'm doing all this crazy adventuring and time travelling because I have people that mean something to me."

"I only have him."

Errin's face leaned halfway towards him, but her eyes rested on the panorama ahead, a sparse forest of birches in between taller oaks and chestnut trees, with the wide hilly countryside of Britannia stretching beyond. Somewhere, many miles to the south, Camelot shimmered in the sun. He realized that Errin had pretty eyes; he had never given this detail thought before. A soft gold-brown, warm whenever the sun met them, but distant with sadness at all other times.

Mordred was her worldview, her source of determination, her everything. She believed in him, and her loyalty could turn her into an obstacle which they would have to face some day in the ever-approaching future if they wanted to make sure a tragedy like The Fall would never repeat itself.

But deep down, Lance knew he lacked the guts to fight her.

"You have us. Gaius, Ivy, Katrina, and for what it's worth, you have me. I asked you to help us, and after dragging you into this mess, I better make sure to drag you out of it too. And if my ears aren't betraying me, someone inside just broke at least five plates at the same time, so how 'bout we make ourselves useful for once."

Lance catapulted himself off the porch, only to hop back on top of it with an overabundance of acrobatics someone else might deem showy. He paused at the doorframe, through which Elizabeth's ceaseless barrage of apologies leaked. After a moment, Errin got up and joined him as he entered the room.

He wondered whether this was the first time he saw her smile.

* * *

Gaius tolerated the commotion within the Boar Hat for a short amount of time before he sneaked away to replace the razzle with the quiet he was granted outside. With the exception of Ivy, who enjoyed the company of her thoughts while lying in the grass where the Boar Hat hill sloped to the south-east, everyone was caught up in preparations. Thus, Gaius had no trouble finding a quiet patch of soil under a tree to read. The roots splitting the ground formed a comfortable trough with sufficient space to lean his back against the tree bark.

When he angled for the notebook in his pocket, his fingers brushed the surface of the Time Crystal, and he recoiled from its cold. With additional care born from apprehension, he turned the pocket sewn into his coat inside out and let its content tumble to the ground between his feet: a screwed tube of ink, two quills, one of them in miserable condition, his notebook, and the crystal itself.

Based on visual input, the magical item appeared lifeless in the way it rested amidst a cluster of ordinary pebbles. A spell on his lips to defend himself, Gaius reached out to make physical contact a second time.

Still cold.

When he had taken the crystal from Katrina inside the seal, its surface had burned with heat, and as far as he could recall, the item had maintained a constant surface temperature. But sometime during the past hours, the Time Crystal had done the unexpected. It was possible, likely in fact, that the crystal reacted towards any given wielder in different ways, based on that individual's magic potential and spell-affinities. Or perhaps this change in temperature hinged on the presence of a magical ability.

Which, in Gaius' case, necessitated the word 'absence' rather than 'presence'.

Despite years of research and study in the field of magic, he had never developed a variant of individualized magic the likes of which were an ordinary sight in the ranks of Holy Knights. He was capable of conducting various spells and incantations, yes, but he lacked the innate advantages with which others mastered a specific type of magic, ranging from elemental and physical to psychological control. And while magical abilities had lost some of their commonness over the years, every once in a while, Gaius caught himself envying those who had been bestowed with such a gift. But his envy was as frigid as it was unreasonable, and Gaius never followed the path of regretful yearning for long.

His calm regained, Gaius shoved the Time Crystal alongside his other belongings back to where they came from and leaned against the tree trunk. Instead of rousing his intellect with the passage on memory magic he had wanted to read, Gaius recited the thirty-eight essential forces of the world as they had been listed by the Wizards of Belialuin. The simplistic task comforted him with its familiarity and chased away the remnants of worry over the Time Crystal.

_Over the mind, there rule a total of seven: animus, melancholy, perception, indoctrination, compassion, memory, and anguish._

_Over the body, there rule a total of…_

His stream of thought was cut short by a sound ringing through the silence, filled with agony and desperation. Buried deep in his recital, Gaius failed to identify the source of disturbance until a shuffle of movement caught his eye. A bird, a nestling to be precise, too young to fly. Its wing feathers, too short to carry its weight, flapped over the ground and raised dust as the creature repeated to cry for help. It had to have dropped out of its nest within the boughs overhead.

Gaius possessed no knowledge on birds to speak of, and could neither tell to which species the nestling belonged nor how to approach it. It was injured, its underdeveloped wing stood mangled from its body. And the longer Gaius waited, the further its movements were reduced to twitches as its muscles spasmed out of control.

Helpless against the decline of its desperate chirps, Gaius lifted the nestling from the ground. He had no healing magic to fall back upon, no means to strengthen the feeble heartbeat in his palm that withered by the second. Healing was a feat reserved for Druids and members of the Goddess Clan, and no matter which lengths Gaius would go to, his efforts were doomed to amount to nothing. All he could do was hold the bird until its life expired under death throes.

He brushed the underbelly with his thumb. No response.

Realization took time to catch up to him, and he did not know what to do or feel when merely his own heartbeat echoed through the back of his head. He gazed on without seeing anything and brushed his thumb across the soft baby feathers. The bird remained motionless.

"It's no use." Gaius flinched and turned to meet Merlin's empathetic glance. No matter the circumstances, he should have been aware of her presence before she had raised her voice. "Its magical energy has left its body. Don't you feel it?"

He did, and he knew Merlin's assessment to be correct; the miniscule beacon which had been the bird's specter in the magic field was no more.

"Every being, no matter how big or small, holds a piece of magic inside of it," Merlin continued as Gaius failed to response. "And as our abilities grow, so does the magic we call our own. But when we die, the energy we have obtained returns to the magic field that spans the world of Britannia as we know it."

"And once this occurs, death is final."

In the past, Merlin had been eager to keep her knowledge and studies regarding this particular mystery of death locked away from Gaius, but unattainable information was the one aspect where he deliberately chose to go against her wishes. Through research done when his mentor had looked the other way, he had garnered a basic understanding of the mechanics of Britannia's source of magic. But many details remained obscured by the mist of ignorance.

Merlin nodded. "In all but the rarest occasions, yes. The fragile construct between a soul and the magic which accompanies it is what defines us as individuals. Without this link, it is nearly impossible to continue existing."

Gaius's curiosity peaked. Never before had Merlin been this willing to share her knowledge, and he hoped to exploit this opportunity to its fullest potential. "But there have been exceptions. Souls have remained in this realm past the death of their body. The Druids have used such methods for centuries. Have you ever attempted to prolong a life after this link had been severed?"

Merlin avoided his gaze and studied the sparse forest and the vista beyond without recognizing any details. While her mind traversed different plains, perhaps a different time, she followed the contours of the brand scars covering the lower part of her face with her index finger. When she continued to speak, her voice was burdened with pensiveness.

"I have done many things you would rightfully deem unethical, and I have committed sins far too grave for you to comprehend. Some of these mistakes I regret, some I don't. There are days where I am certain that my failures will catch up to me, but it has yet to happen with the cruelty I expect. Until then, I will serve the Sins and Britannia to the best of my abilities. And if the future is kind, I will learn from my mistakes and never again dare to bend the rules to my liking."

Gaius looked up to his mentor as the patterns of light and shadow filtering through the leaves amplified her chiseled features. Even in the darkest of times, she was a flare of hope, of knowledge, of a power Gaius could never hope to learn. And despite the distant sorrow swimming in her golden eyes, he had never admired her more.

* * *

The day was drawing to a close, and the sun wrestled against the force which pulled it behind the silhouettes of the western trees, before the Sins concluded preparations. Elaine had further detained the process by peppering every living soul in sight with questions about what had happened, how they had come across the youths from Camlann and how their story went. In the end, Diane had to drag her out of the kitchen with an arbitrary problem she needed to discuss – otherwise Ban would have never gotten around to prepare the meat, and Meliodas might have lost the last of his strained nerves.

Errin had found welcome diversion in setting up plates and moving around furniture. The work gave her something to do other than pondering, a simple task her mind could occupy itself with.

The evening passed her by in much the same way, albeit for different reasons. Ban's food was – as Errin could now attest to – something to behold, and her taste buds were time and time again treated to another exquisite sensation she hadn't believed to exist. From the simplest of bakery produce to the most complex combinations of seasoned meat with the perfect amount of spice in the form of thyme, rosemary, and other herbs she couldn't identify by taste; Ban had crafted an entire banquet worthy of kings.

Furthermore, Errin had learned to enjoy the company of the Sins. The time she had spent with them over the past days allowed her to notice their little quirks and be enthralled by them. From the way Elizabeth placed her steps with grace, but nevertheless found every crack in the floor to stumble over. To the way King and Diane sometimes seemed to fall into a bubble all of their own whenever their eyes met across the room. To the stupid arm-wrestling match a drunk Ban challenged Meliodas to – only for the table to break in two before someone could emerge victorious.

Lance, Ivy, and Katrina were used to this banter, and even Gaius had attended these festivities once or twice before. But for Errin every moment held another eye-opening surprise in store.

Most of these people she knew from tales and legends rather than as individuals. And yet, she felt the strange warmth of welcome. Maybe more so than what she used to have in Camelot. There she had worked like the perfect machine; had trained until she collapsed with an undisputed grin, had climbed the ranks of Holy Knights alongside Mordred and later surpassed him in certain regards. Errin had felt fulfilled back then.

But she couldn't deny the pull towards these people who _enjoyed_ more than anything else. Who valued comradery more than success, friendship more than skills. And for maybe the first time, Errin questioned the life she had been living up until this point.

The food had been served and devoured, and beverage – in most cases those of the intoxicating type – took its place in everyone's focal point.

Errin sipped at the mild ale Diane had handed her and grinned to herself as Lance and Katrina performed a subpar imitation of the dance King and Diane had shared before. The overenthusiastic cheers from all sides colored both their faces red against the dim light.

What had looked instinctual and captivating in its beauty with King and Diane – until Diane's excess of turns and twirls in combination with King's sensitivity to the alcohol he had consumed had made him beg for a pause – looked stiff and forced with Lance and Katrina. Although both were light on their feet, they kept pulling against one another, and their performance resulted in many stepped-on toes and fumbled steps. Katrina refused to give Lance the control he needed to lead her, while Lance struggled with the solid foot height difference between them and failed to keep his hands in place as a result. They pulled and dragged and towed across the stone tiles with the grace of two Dusk Bison during mating season.

Flustered to no end, they cut the performance short after one halfway decent spin. The pair accepted their wave of applause from all around with stone expressions. Lance downright collapsed onto the seat next to Errin and drowned his embarrassment with the contents of her mug.

"And that's exactly why I don't bet," Errin said and plucked her drink from his sweaty hands.

"Gimme a break," Lance grumbled into his non-existent beard. "I had no clue everyone would bet on a tie. That shouldn't even happen in arm-wrestling! I wanted to ask Ivy, but she's got this predilection for seeing me suffer."

"Ivy dances?"

Lance denied her an answer in favor of a grim staring-contest with the deserted dance floor. No matter how hard she tried, Errin failed to imagine Ivy memorizing steps to then impersonate them with the subtle emotions any prolific dance possessed. Without punching someone in the face first.

"Do we get to hear the poem this time too, Escanor? Please?" Diane asked. She was busy patting King's back, who had yet to recover from his spinning head.

"I want to hear it too! Ban never gets the words right when he tells me about it," Elaine said and jerked out the position she had nestled in between Ban's arms.

Escanor shifted in his chair. "B-but aren't you tired of hearing the same one every year?"

"Not like you to refrain from an opportunity to cite one of your poems to us," Meliodas said and gestured to the open space in the center of the room. "The stage's all yours."

"You'll love this," Lance murmured into Errin's ear. "He presents this poem every year just for this occasion. Probably his best work."

More intrigued than ever, Errin leaned forward as Escanor shuffled to the stage, encouraged by Gowther's thumps-up and the other's attentive silence. Once he stood amidst the center of attention, his body language changed. He straightened his back, the aura of vulnerability disappeared, and without hesitation or a hint of a stutter he recited a poem from memory. His voice carried through the room with might and a little flavor of pride.

_The scene was Britannia, a prosperous land_

_Plagued by Demons and forces far darker in sum._

_ There lived a king, troubled by what was to come._

_ To counter the threat, he enlisted these knights._

_ Seven in number._

_ Sinners from the furthest corners and lowest of depths_

_ From all different clans with one burden to share._

_ Lead by their Captain, the Dragon's feist' burning heir_

_ They fought the lesser wars, aided the commoner._

_ And they were seven in number._

_ But darkness rose unseen to them, in Liones' inner heart._

_ Where the Great Holy Knight was ruthlessly slain_

_ Word quick as fire then spread: 'The Sins are to blame'._

_ So, they fled to become criminals once more._

_ One by one by one._

_ Till the shadows aimed higher and prepared for their ploy_

_ And only one princess stood to see through their lies._

_ She garnered these criminals, branded as uncivilized_

_ To fight back the dark of the New Holy War._

_ Till their number was seven again._

_ Together, they defied the armies of evil, scourges of the land_

_ And the demonic king himself feared their might_

_ And their unity purged him in unfading light._

_ So that Britannia may rejoice and call out:_

_ They were seven in number!_

_ Now the Holy War is over, and peace abounded._

_ Their demons defeated to be heroes of new_

_ These criminals live on with small lives of their own._

_ In happiness, you can see them sit here together._

_ Their number is far greater than seven._

Entranced in the steady rhythm of Escanor's voice, Errin barely noticed the slew of applause washing over the room until orders passed between her brain to her hands, and she was clapping along.

Her father's stories of the Seven Deadly Sins and their heroics had accompanied so many of her late evening hours, when Camelot had been drifting into dreams of grandeur, when the businesses of the day had been set to rest for a while. To hear these stories compiled into a poem was different, less a bond between a father and his children and more a presentation of vast proportions. And yet, Errin felt the pure enthusiasm of a child as she cheered to one incarnation of these legends standing in the middle of the room, a bit overwhelmed by the positive feedback.

For just one moment.


	16. Despite All Efforts

– Two days before The Fall –

Gaius flicked through the pages of _A Compendium of Minerals and Gemstones _with what an outsider might describe as increased frustration. The Time Crystal alongside Merlin's humorous yet dead-serious note rested on the massive experiment table beside him and mocked him with its unanswered mysteries which seemed to drift farther from clarity the longer Gaius tried to solve them. He had searched through the _Compendium _multiple times and from different angles but without discovering the crucial puzzle piece to identify the shell of the Time Crystal. He had applied color, texture, as well as usage in the field of magic as the primary factor of classification, but none of the descriptions or detailed drawings matched the Time Crystal beyond doubt.

His thoughts had first jumped to an amethyst, but the Time Crystal lacked both the striped color layers often found within these stones and the transparency of their surface. Moreover, amethysts had found use for housing or amplifying mental healing spells, nothing as substantial as time manipulation. And while the crystal's trigonal shape fit the description and colorized ink drawing of siberite, not only was this type of tourmaline a rarity all throughout Britannia, the uneven fracture would only allow for the Time Crystal's sharp edges through tremendous efforts.

Gaius tapped the Time Crystal's dark surface as though the touch might incline the item to reveal its heritage. Of course, the item remained silent. No outside force pressured him to find out what the crystal was made of, in fact, he could ask Merlin and be presented with an answer if he wanted. But in that case, he would have to content with Merlin's explanation without any cross-references, and that scenario seemed utterly undesirable to Gaius.

With more force than required, Gaius shut the _Compendium _and rose from his chair to place the heavy volume into its designated spot on one of the many bookshelves dominating the walls of Merlin's laboratory. Knowledge on every field of science, magic, and history rested on these shelves, eager to share their secrets with any inquisitive reader. Some of these texts stemmed from a time as far back as the Holy War, preserved by ancient spells the likes of which had been forgotten. As he ran his fingers over the leather backs of the neighboring books, he went rigid with an idea. How could he have been so limited in his research?

Tense with excitement, Gaius hurried back to the table. He only used the bare minimum time to go through the necessary incantation. _"__Marmeno tubu bantarumashi_._"_

Gaius lifted one hand, and to his delight, the Time Crystal rose until it hovered a couple inches over the table's surface. And this behavior proved that the Time Crystal was in no way a mineral or a gemstone as he had though – the item was made out of metal. Otherwise the spell intended to grant him control over all types of metal and alloy would have showed no effect.

He whipped out his quill to write the discovery into his notebook when Merlin emerged from the stairs. Gaius shoved the Time Crystal into the depths of his robes and pretended to examine the filigree apparatus designed to extract essence from leaves and herbs Merlin had left on the table. A deep-green liquid bubbled in one of the test tubes.

"Have you decided to journey to Liones soon?" Gaius asked, aiming for a monotone voice. The question did emerge from his curiosity but also allowed Gaius to divert suspicion away from his doings – Merlin never liked to see him near the Time Crystal for reasons she guarded with untypical aggression. And he had learned to stop asking her.

"Yes, I fear the stakes might be far higher than what I initially believed," Merlin answered. "Are you interested in coming along? You wouldn't be allowed at the meeting, of course, but the trip would give you some time to see the others. The change in environment might benefit you."

Gaius took a second to consider the offer. "I think I would prefer to remain here. I have a few theories on the synergy between spells and objects I would like to test."

"I understand," Merlin said, but she seemed saddened by his response. Though Gaius could not decipher why she might feel this way. Had his recent performance in the art of magic disappointed her?

The conversation dried out, and Gaius used the opportunity to head upstairs, in order to place the Time Crystal in his room. The simple furniture offered few options to store such a valuable item, so he decided on a fold beneath his pillow for a hiding spot. Merlin had no reason to miss the item in the near future, and Gaius needed more time to dissect its mysteries.

A ruckus downstairs startled him, and he left his room to sneak halfway down the winding staircase. The insistent sound of someone banging at the door with full force echoed through the room and made the plentiful glass tubes tinkle in their stand on the table until Merlin opened the door by an inch.

"Sir Nashtar, such unexpected and unpleasant appointment," Merlin said.

Nashtar's tone dripped with the same fake politeness. "Lady Merlin, King Mordred requires your assistance and expertise with spell work. If I may enter…"

"If the _prince _of Camelot wishes for my aid, he may ask for it himself."

"No one can deny your status as Britannia's finest Mage, but the matter stands that you have benefitted from the late King Arthur's generosity when it comes to your work and this fine establishment. In return, you swore loyalty to him, didn't you?" Nashtar pushed the door open before Merlin could attempt to seal the entrance with a spell. Two knights in armor followed on his heels. "Therefore, his heir has certain privileges when it comes to your craftsmanship. We won't bother you for long, but I must ask you to hand over your magical item number 256."

"What possible advantage could Mordred gain from 'Prison Casket'? I can't imagine he has any interest in interrogating people with advanced magical capabilities anytime soon."

Merlin took another step back to allow Nashtar and his two followers to step inside, but her relaxed posture and superior expression proved she controlled the situation. Unlike Nashtar, Iseo remained unaware of that fact.

"Give us the item Merlin, or choose to suffer the consequences," the female knight said and raised her weapon. The metal of her halberd briefly reflected the dim light from outside. Then Nashtar's hand shot upward and blocked her way.

"Now, now, Iseo, we are mere guests in this house. Lady Merlin is a reasonable woman and will surely grant us entrance to her domain when we ask for her aid in a matter that will affect Britannia as a whole. The last thing we want is for unnecessary blood to be spilled. Especially when there are children around." Nashtar's smile widened a notch. "Tell me Lady Merlin, where is that lovely disciple of yours? Gaius, wasn't it?"

Gaius moved deeper into the shadows of the staircase. Nashtar was not yet aware of his presence, but this could change in a moment's notice. One look spared to the single escape route beside the front door would suffice.

"You won't dare to touch him," Merlin growled. Gaius imagined to hear a pinch of fear in her composed tone. And Nashtar caught this weakness as well.

"Oh, of course not. But he might be more willing to help us in our search for the Prison Casket, don't you think?" Nashtar held up two fingers in a manner that might have seemed casual if the gesture had not stirred movement into his fellow knights. Iseo and Coel took to the order and fanned out to circle the research table. Their weapons remained lowered, but Iseo's fingers twitched over the hilt of her halberd, all too eager to make use of its deadly blade.

"What ignorance has overcome you, that you believe any of your lowly magic tricks and fighting abilities could be enough to overpower me?" Merlin asked, but the stress in her voice rendered the insult useless.

"I don't. Not yet that is."

Gaius reacted too late. Even though he saw the bolt of magic-infused iron of soaring at him from Nashtar's subordinate, he could do none other than stare as Merlin's head spun towards him. Her eyes were wide with terror. Gaius failed to think of a single spell, even the simplest of incantation had escaped his thoughts. In the corner of his field of view, Merlin moved her lips with words of the ancient language while Nashtar and Iseo pushed past the furniture to capitalize on their opponent's diversion. The bright light of teleportation magic hit Gaius a heartbeat before the attack did. The Holy Knights, the laboratory, and all of Camelot disappeared. And so did Merlin.

In the endless darkness of a space from half-forgotten stories, Gaius was left with the uncertainty of where he was – and whether Merlin had seen the sword strike aimed at her back coming.

* * *

The first beams of morning sunlight signaled the time to part had arrived.

Everyone had gathered outside the Boar Hat to exchange a few last words before bidding farewell to each other. Katrina stood a little outside of the commotion and the bulk of conversation and smiled to herself. Soon, she would be home. Her parents would await her with open arms instead of the kindness of strangers, and everything would be alright.

Lance turned down Elizabeth's offers to escort the kids home, pack them provisions, or help them out some other way with a slew of reassurances. Only for Meliodas to state that Lance could always count on them, and Elizabeth may stop pushing Lance into a corner with her overbearing sympathy. He grinned while saying it.

Right next to them, Ban patted Ivy's head and wished her the best of luck, which earned him a beam of gratitude. Gaius smiled at something Escanor said; adorable wrinkles formed in the corners of his eyes. Diane embraced Errin in a farewell hug, while one of her arms remained interlaced with King's, and he couldn't figure out how to free his arm to hug them both.

"Sometimes they can be rather dense," Merlin said with a small smile of her own. She had slipped past Katrina's notice to stand beside her with all the volatility of mist in the summer sun. "Even Gowther needed longer to figure things out than I anticipated."

Katrina was clueless as to how Merlin had managed to discover _that_ particular truth, but she refrained from questioning her. After all, Merlin loved to keep a certain aura of mystery wrapped around herself. She had once said, she preferred this aura over any cloak.

"Thank you, Merlin," Katrina said instead. "Without you, and all of you really, we wouldn't have made it."

"Don't be too grateful, it was just as much an act of self-preservation as it was a means to help you." Another smile, this time at the verge of humor. "I do look forward to meeting you and your friends officially though. Someday. And one word of advice: don't try to deny what you are. You will only end up hurting yourself."

Merlin left Katrina alone with this cryptic instruction and walked over to Escanor to shoo Gaius away. He nodded, either to himself or to something Merlin had said and joined Katrina in waiting for the rest of their group to catch up. Unfortunately, Lance seemed all too eager to thank his father after he had freed himself from Elizabeth's grasp.

"You two could be twins," Diane remarked with a grin. Astounded by the similarity, she looked back and forth between father and son.

Ivy and Lance tensed. Other than Ban's solid one-and-a-half feet height advantage over his son, they looked too alike not to notice. From their scrawny build – in Ban's case obscured by muscle weight he had gained later in life – to the sharp edges of their jawline, all the way to the red of their eyes.

"Yeah, just give Lance a couple hundred years to age, and they will look exactly the same," King said, unable to hide the grin curling his lips.

"Look who's talking, old man!"

King evaded the punch Ban threw after him with ease. Elaine sighed. "You two are unbelievable."

The playful banter managed to divert suspicion away from Lance. He tucked at Ivy's arm, but she hesitated. She held the embraces of her parents a little too long, and King's eyes widened in surprise, but he didn't question the action.

Katrina didn't want that kind of heartfelt goodbye with her own parents; she didn't know how well she could hide her emotions from them. But she wasn't spared a few words of encouragement.

"Take care, Katrina," Meliodas said. "And take care of the others, will ya? They'll need someone with some common sense. Safe travel!"

Katrina almost surrendered. But in the end, she managed to mutter an 'okay' and turned around before Elizabeth could add something. She needed to stay calm, at least for a few more minutes.

From one moment to the next, all words were spent, and the Boar Hat disappeared behind the crest of the hill. Lance and Ivy waved back one last time while Katrina trudged forward, careful to suppress the urge to do the same. Gowther and Ivy exchange a glance and a nod. A thin trail of purple magic hovered over Gowther's outstretched palm: an «Invasion» spell, ready to be casted. When the Sins disappeared out of view, the purple light expanded to flash over the hill for one brief moment, an oddly-colored lightning strike. Then the singing of birds resumed, and the memories of nine individuals spanning the past three days were purged.

"You think they will be okay?" Ivy asked.

"Sure, they'll just think they knocked themselves out with alcohol for a couple hours," Lance said. His tone did not quite match his words in certainty.

This early in the morning, Liones' capital had yet to fill with people going by their daily routine, and both the streets leading to its gates and the city's inner alleys lacked commotion when they reached them. The lack of curious passers-by made finding a narrow passageway between two neighboring houses that concealed them from spectators an easy feat.

Ivy was tapping her foot, and her eyes hurried between the entrances of the alley. Outside, the morning sun glistered on the uneven surface of pathing stone, but the alley itself was cast in shadows, the buildings around too high and too clustered to allow direct light to enter. The air had maintained a taste of the chill of the night and smelled of straw and rotten wood.

Gaius met Katrina's eyes and revealed the Time Crystal in his palm. A plain shard. Nothing to worry about. "I am not sure if I am able to provide it with the magic it requires," he said with a slight frown carved into his forehead.

"We better not take chances," Lance said and eyed Katrina with a mixture of hope and guilt.

Katrina gulped and plucked the crystal out of Gaius open palm, surprised by how familiar its shape and cold surface had become to her fingertips. As if a piece of her she had lost had returned. A part of her, a voice filled with hunger, urged her to make use of its potential.

"I will be with you the entire time and help you if something were to go wrong," Gaius promised so quietly only Katrina could hear him. He closed her fingers around the crystal.

She knew what to say. No excuse to wait any longer.

As she had done when using the crystal to journey into the past, Katrina raised her hand parallel to the ground amidst their circle. Gaius hand still held onto hers. One after the other, Errin, Lance, and Ivy stacked their hands atop of theirs.

The magic tingled through her nervous system before Katrina even thought of the spell. "_Atemoto remadeshi_ _varte dekida_."

The familiar clockface of bright lines appeared, and its hands spun forward faster and faster until the individual shapes merged into a circle of blurry gold. Light encapsulated her, robbed Katrina of her visual sense and left her in a void where she knew neither up nor down.

Then the ocean collapsed over her head.

Her breathing spiraled out of control as she gasped for air that wasn't there, tried to make sense of her surroundings without eyes or ears to realize them, the taste of nausea on her tongue the only proof she was alive. Gaius hand had either stopped holding hers or the numbness in her fingers was as much an illusion as the shutdown of her other senses. Demonic magic coursed through her veins instead of blood, and its strength, a raw, greedy power, burned her from the inside with the heat of Purgatory flames. Her lungs ached, and every breath flared with a kaleidoscope of images, always dark, always destructive, always _hungry_. Shadows carved out her eyes, left her blind, but the images remained, repeated themselves in a senseless circle like hands rushing across a clockface of golden lines. Katrina couldn't tell if she was flying or falling, but the distortion of her surroundings never wavered as time raced by until the clock hands came to a screeching halt.

Silence.

Then they ticked the seconds away with normal speed. Vision returned to her in small pieces, and even then, the world remained incomprehensible. Shadows swayed in front of her, appearing and reappearing like afterimages of a nightmare she failed to grasp.

Katrina delved into the pool of Goddess magic inside her to hide from the shadows. But the light was gone. Or rather the darkness from outside had corrupted its essence. The black fangs, once the golden hands of a clock, poisoned the white magic until nothing but a colorless abyss remained. But by then she had already submitted herself to the source of power.

When she spread her wings, they shimmered like obsidian. The wings of a Demon.

A force beyond her influence ripped from her the last remnants of control, of composure, of character. She was a vessel of dark magic, had served this purpose from the first breath she had claimed, filled droplet by droplet with every moment of fear she had experienced, and now the vessel had at last been filled over the brink. She couldn't contain the shadows anymore.

She had lost the fight.

Her thoughts, her memory, every little moment that defined her fractured.

Suddenly, from somewhere outside her hiding space amidst the cold, dark, empty hollow of her being, he reached out to her. First with intangible words, then with his hand. Gaius pulled her out of her depths right before she shattered.

"I promised to save you if anything happened to you. Please… let me fulfill that promise."

They were hovering in the air, a few feet above the ground, his arms wrapped around her. Katrina felt the dark wings disappear from her back and slumped into Gaius' grip. She lacked the energy to cry into his shoulder, and her body trembled as though she had fought a hundred men with bare hands. But the relief overwhelmed her as the darkness retreated, and the Time Crystal dropped out of her loose grip. With a sharp click, the shard met the stone below.

Katrina's feet were treated to the sensation of solid ground as Gaius descended. She pulled back a little and looked at him once she was certain her legs would hold her weight. He seemed unharmed; Katrina had expected to find the skin of his face burned to the bone due to the eruption Demon magic, but by miracle or his own doing the flames had spared him.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I couldn't control it anymore, I couldn't do anything to stop it, I… I could have killed you. I'm so sorry," Katrina rambled.

Gaius' brilliant blue eyes locked with hers. "I know, but there is no reason to apologize. You are well. That is what matters."

Katrina might have kept on staring at him if her brain had been less keen to pick up the shambles of her unprocessed memories, and she remembered why she was standing in this deserted alleyway in Liones' capital, the Time Crystal at her feet.

"Where are the others?" she asked. A shadow crossed Gaius's features, and his eyes drifted away. "Gaius, what happened? What have I done to them?"

"You did nothing to hurt them in any way," Gaius said slowly. "But our plan has failed. The city is burning down as we speak. Katrina, Mordred managed to enact The Fall without the Colossai."

* * *

He had seen the end of it coming. All of it. Katrina should have never been burdened with the Time Crystal, but Gaius had gone one step further and had exposed her to the crystal's lingering intent. And his excuse? He resented the item on a fundamental level, a distain far deeper than what could be rooted in logic. And as he had carried the crystal for the past day, oftentimes shaking when the knowledge of its presence sprouted in his consciousness, he had come to distrust it. Gaius had gladly given the crystal away, even though he knew Katrina's Demon magic responded to the crystal's will far stronger than his meager powers.

Katrina being consumed by that same Demon magic as the crystal subjugated her had been an inevitability. One Gaius had helped shape into form.

Despite the high tribute the crystal demanded, the item had carried out the task it had been instructed with; they had arrived at the day of The Fall. And if the obliteration of the Colossai had been enough to alter events, that day would have seen Liones' capital in a state of safety and routine. But the city still stood in flames. The Sins were still dead.

Gaius had considered The Fall to be a fixpoint in time, an event with such far reaching effects that it could not be avoided, for otherwise its loss would disrupt the fabric of reality itself – the outcomes of the Holy Wars of past fell into this category according to time theorists. But upon further introspection, he realized such was likely not the case.

The scenery lacked the destructive force of the Colossai. They would have torn open the earth below the city streets and destroyed the buildings in their path to carry out Mordred's command; a city in flames did in no ways fit their profile. Furthermore, Gaius failed to identify the traces of signature magic, the corrupted form of earth manipulation which followed the Colossai wherever they went. Mordred had to have found a different way to bring about The Fall of Liones. The course of time _had _adapted to their actions in the past. But the result was lackluster because they had left the central variable untouched that _could_ alter the passing of events.

All these thoughts were running through his mind in a confusing fight for supremacy as Gaius hurried through Liones' destroyed city streets. Katrina trudged behind him, worn out by the usage of magic. He had sent Lancelot and the others away once he had realized the danger spreading from Katrina to keep them out of harm's way – it remained a mystery to him why he himself had not experienced graver injuries –, but in retrospect he should have discouraged them from a hasty and unplanned flight.

After rushing past a corner and realizing what lay beyond it, Gaius dragged Katrina back into the shadows of the two-story building that had yet to fall victim to the fires. A pair of Holy Knights showcasing Mordred's emblem patrolled the streets. Their heavy armor jangled with every step.

"_Mashi progattario e akipario kiashi madara_," Gaius whispered. The alteration of the invisibility spell –_ mashi progattario _– extended its effect onto Katarina and fused with the silencing spell he had attached to blend them with the crumbly masonry of the building behind them.

As the two knights moved closer, Gaius identified both of them as members of Mordred's inner circle, the Holy Knights of the Round Table Iseo and Ronal. The siblings had trained under Escanor before vowing their loyalty to their crown prince. What they lacked in intellect they more than made up for with fighting prowess and cruelty; the duo had put an end to a small amalgamation of regime-critical individuals in the eastern outskirts of Camelot within a day by executing every last one of them. And Gaius all to clearly recalled Iseo's blood-thirsty expression when she had invaded Merlin's laboratory.

The two knights passed the side alley in which Gaius and Katrina stood motionless, concealed by Gaius' spell. A spell that – as Gaius realized too late – had no hopes to deceive Ronal's magical ability «Detection». The Holy Knight's head jerked in their direction, alerted by two pools of magical energy that had no business hiding in a quarter devoid of defenders from Liones. He made one step in their direction, unable to see anyone to whom the powerful presences might belong to, and Katrina's grip tightened around Gaius hand. The pain of his fingers shot through his arm, he lost focus, and the short-duration concealment spell snapped as soon as Gaius stopped feeding it with energy. Ronal's eyes glistered as though he had just found a valuable present with his nametag.

"Well, if it isn't Gaius. And that Demon brat too," Iseo said with a sugary smile. "I didn't think you would have the courage to show your face after you disappeared so suddenly, Gaius. Have you already moved on from the death of your precious mentor? Or are you here because you wanted to witness the elimination of the rest of the Seven Deadly Sins?"

Ronal shot his sister a grim look and cracked his neck. "See Gaius, King Mordred doesn't have a bone to pick with you. For your own sake, step back and let us take the girl into custody. I won't make this offer a second time."

Iseo's displeased look spoke volumes on how little she thought of her brother's willingness to leave Gaius unharmed, and she crudely stepped past Ronal to raise her halberd so that its tip pointed at the unprotected opening between Gaius third and fourth upper rib.

Gaius raised both hands, flexed his fingers to form a triangle, and expanded said triangle with a decisive motion. "_Quar ekameno bantarumashi_," he commanded, and four spheres comprised of the four main elements materialized in front of him. The first element – water in the form of ice – froze Iseo upon impact with her head, though not for long, and air swept Ronal from his feet. Gaius shoved Katrina past the two defenseless Holy Knights while further delaying their recovery with a cluster of stone shards sent to rain down on them.

"Are you able to call forth your wings?" Gaius asked while running. The use of magical energy had been of minor significance, but he nevertheless felt the loss in the additional effort he needed to overcome the slight incline of the street.

Katrina shook her head. Her breathing stumbled in between steps. The howled outburst of anger behind them as Iseo broke free of her icy confinement, motivated Gaius to hurl the orb of fire over his shoulder. The blind shot had little chance of hitting the target, but the sparks might slow Iseo's steps. In the hastily constructed base form Gaius had used, these elemental spells were far from powerful and could be overcome by anyone with basic magic training, but he hesitated to use incantations of higher potential. Not only because he was bound to need the energy later, but also because he harbored no rancor towards Ronal or even Iseo. They found pleasure in combat and forceful victory, but they used to be respected knights of Camelot. And as Merlin's disciple, Gaius had crossed paths with many of Mordred's followers. Some of them he had learned to tolerate far more than other humans.

Sentimentalities were of no use of course, so Gaius ordered his steps to fasten. The many towers of battlements of the palace swallowed what little light remained past the smoke clouds as he and Katrina hurried towards the structure. Other than slain Holy Knights of Liones they faced no further disturbances until they reached the inner courtyard before the palace entrance. The traces of a vicious battle were omnipresent, and only one figure stood upright amidst the chaos of bodies and rubble. Katrina congealed to a statue right beside him.

* * *

The smoke hanging in the air was denser than last time and filled Ivy's lungs with every breath she took, forced her to cough in between steps.

She couldn't be sure they were gone; they burning state of the capital might indicate all Sins had fallen at the hands of Mordred's forces. But she couldn't be sure. And that fleeting uncertainty kept her going.

"Ivy, stop to think for a moment, damn it!" Lance should rather save his breath if he wanted to keep up with her. Then again, he would be better off if he gave up and returned to Gaius and Katrina.

Ivy only spared a second to reminisce about the image of Katrina rising above the street level, carried upwards by black wings. Gaius had urged them to get out of proximity, and with the distant screams humming in her ears, she hadn't refused for long. Ivy knew they had failed as soon as the odor of burned flesh had invaded her nose. And the view outside the alleyway painted a picture of catastrophe. Buildings burned down to their core, bodies scattered across the street, the traces of destructive magical abilities which distorted the balance of magic all around. Ivy's gaze caught the towering shape of the castle in the distance, once the image of might for the kingdom of Liones, now the source of her determination.

Her fist clenched around Gideon's hilt, Ivy hurried through the broken inner walls and up the wide stairway leading to the castle building. Lance's light steps accompanied by Errin's heavier ones followed her like a distorted double echo.

She skidded to a stop, surprised to see the yard dominated by a crowd of Mordred's crows in shiny armor. Five heads turned towards the newcomer.

Nashtar grinned as his eyes set upon her. "What a wonderful coincidence, Lady Ivy. Mordred has been looking for you, but we were unable to find any trace on your whereabouts. Not even your father could give us information of use. A real shame; Mordred persuaded him to talk with such ease."

All for nothing. The journey back in time, the fight with the Colossai, the trip itself had all been for nothing. Nashtar's eyes feasted on Ivy's expression as he crossed the distance between them. Behind her, Lance and Errin entered the yard, and Nashtar's smile dipped a notch before returning to its superior state.

With a brief gesture, he ordered the quartet of Holy Knights behind him to fan out before he addressed Errin. "Your timing is ideal, Errin, though I must say I am pleasantly surprised about your presence. In any case, the Seven Deadly Sins have revealed themselves to be traitors of the realm, and everyone who conspired with them must be taken into custody. Or killed if they choose to resist. On behalf of the rightful king of Camelot and Britannia, Mordred."

"Spare me your foul words, Nashtar," Errin said. She unsheathed her sword and joined Lance and Ivy in a defensive circle that was already surrounded by Nashtar's men.

Nashtar drew his weapon and adjusted his stance. "Kill the boy. Try to capture the other two alive, but if they happen to die, I won't mind either."

A mistake on his part; his order robbed those knights with offensive magical abilities of their trump card. Ivy struck first and her array of stone pillars broke the enemy's formation, a move that provoked them to assess the trio from a safer distance. Nashtar was the only one to not be the least bit intimidated and stepped closer. Lance and Ivy darted away in opposing directions to leave Errin a plain field to face Nashtar; her magical ability «Override» was the best and only shot they had against him.

Ivy used the momentum to charge at her first opponent and hit the Holy Knight with a combination of long-range swings with Gideon. Orland blocked the assault with the blunt side of his sword. His legwork was subpar at best, and he stumbled backwards, shaking under the force of her hits. Ivy saw her chance and circled him to pretend an elbow-punch to his side, only to aim low with her other arm to swipe her opponent's legs from under him with Gideon's added length.

Before she could finish the fallen knight, another one stepped in. The blond female opened with a combination of thrusts and precise blows with minimal movement. The hits came in such rapid succession that Ivy had no time to think about a counter strike. The knight – Ragnell, another one of Mordred's loyalists – pursued Ivy's backwards steps with a three-point technique; up-left, down-right, up-right. While retreating back further, Ivy used her free hand to direct scattered brick stones at her opponent to widen the opening. Meanwhile, Orland had reclaimed his footing and was drawing closer alongside his partner.

Or at least Ivy assumed the armored fighter was him. But the blurry figure charging at her dissolved as soon as Ivy landed a hit against it. The punch into thin air made her stumble, and her teeth clawed into the insides of her cheek. The taste of iron filled her mouth.

"«Proliferation»," Ragnell said with a grim smile and copied herself two times over. And from one moment to the next, the odds stood three against one. "I've been looking forward to this," the choir of Ragnells cooed before they charged in a blur of metal.

Keeping track of the original was easy enough at first; Ivy only bothered with the duplicates when they came too close for comfort and focused all her efforts on keeping the real foe busy in hopes of breaking her concentration through physical and magical attacks alike. But when the enemy's advances became more relentless and Orland rejoined the fight, Ivy lost track of the original's movements. Not for long, but long enough to be unable to identify the real Ragnell.

Ivy panted and retreated to gain a moment to breathe. Orland attempted to put more pressure on her with a fire ball, but the projectile missed her by a couple feet. On the other side of the courtyard, Lance had disposed of one of his opponents and cornered the other with a quick chain of expertly combined strikes and thrusts. He seemed in no need of aid, so Ivy returned focus to her own battle against the odds and her labored breath.

Ragnell's apparitions were unable to deal out damage and disappeared upon contact with a physical object. Nevertheless, Ivy had to evade every single hit because one of them might originate from the initial knight. The risk was too high. She needed another way out. Ivy pivoted backwards overhead, and pressed her free palm on the ground in the middle of the flip. In addition to the extra momentum, she used the brief connection between her hand and the earth to manipulate its structure. Waves spread out from the point of contact, bricks were propelled out of their sockets, and the two copies dispelled.

Before Ivy had a chance to think of a follow-up strike, Lance had raced towards the two knights, and faster than the eye could follow, he struck both baffled opponents down with two swift strikes.

"Jeez, don't tell me you already got rid of your own knights to fight. Did you train in secret?" Ivy asked. The two other Holy Knights rolled and groaned at the far side of the courtyard, for the moment defeated.

"I've bested Laurelin and Mark before. The two can't seem to coordinate their attacks." The grin over the momentary victory faded from Lance's face. They both turned to look at Errin.

She had forced Nashtar into a constant retreat which had led both of them closer to the palace doors. Neither could capitalize on any additional magic force, so the fight purely rested on the combatant's dueling strength and technique. Errin had the upper hand, but her movements had become slow and predictable. Her brash style counted on her ability to end fights with the first few blows and wasn't suited for a long-lasting duel such as this.

After exchanging a nod, Ivy and Lance stepped in to corner Nashtar, who found himself caught in a triangle between the three of them. Nashtar made the only logical move in his position: he barraged Errin with a steak of quick thrusts that worked their way past her defenses. Her armor shielded her from major wounds, but the impact force drove her back.

Ivy called the earth to her aid and conjured a stone formation between Errin and Nashtar, which knocked the latter from his feet. Lance stood over the grounded Holy Knight before he could rebuild his composure and activate his magical ability. The tip of Lance's righthand sword hovered an inch above the bulge of Nashtar's throat.

"You and I both know you don't have it in you to kill me."

"Where are the Sins?" Lance asked.

Nashtar spat out blood and grinned. "Long dead. Just like you will soon be."

Lance reacted to the shift in Nashtar's muscles but not fast enough. Nashtar grabbed for his boot, a bone creaked, Lance's sword was deflected by «Critical Damage», and suddenly Nashtar stood on his feet. His sword cut into Ivy's arm before she could dart out of the way; her pain receptors exploded with hot, white agony. Her vision swayed and rotated 180 degrees. The earth barrier she had set up shattered as Nashtar landed a backhanded hit against her skull. Ivy's teeth clacked together. Through the white spots in her periphery, she could see Nashtar knocking Errin from her feet with a two-hit combo to her chin and then to the back of her knees. Lance – barely able to stand – intervened as Nashtar spun around to finish off Ivy and took the hit he meant to block with his shoulder. Everything became blurry.

And even as her senses faded and her heartbeat fluttered, Lance huddled in front of her, one limp and one uninjured arm placed around her, as Nashtar towered over him.

* * *

Nashtar's frame dominated the scene. His weapon dripped with fresh blood. Errin crawled on her arms and knees before him, tried to return to her feet before Nashtar cut her attempt short with a kick to her ribs. Her cry reverberated across the yard and from the high stone walls. Lance held an injured Ivy in his arms in an attempt to shield her from Nashtar, despite the deep wound in his right shoulder. Equal parts desperate and determined, Gaius stepped forward as another figure entered the courtyard from inside the palace.

Mordred.

His eyes widened before coming to rest on Errin. He made another step in her direction; everything else had become of secondary interest. No sound but the thud of his metal boots rung through the yard, the countdown of the final moments before catastrophe. The might of his presence grew until it seemed to block the smoke-filled sky with a dark blanket, a pressure in the air that made Gaius shiver. All this magical strength…

Katrina acted, long before Gaius could hold her back. A golden clock appeared. A bright light emitted from her palms to swallow her. Gaius shouted her name. The brightness ceased and the dust settled, and Katrina was no more.

* * *

**(A/N) **Yep, the story isn't over yet. You didn't think that the defeat of the Colossai would be enough to prevent The Fall and the death of the Sins, did you? Although this chapter took longer to edit than I hoped, I'm glad I made it in only a little over two weeks. And I'm really excited to share the next one!

As always, let me know what you thought of the chapter, the story in general, or feel encouraged to share any other thoughts you have with a comment. Feedback is an author's lifeblood. So long!


	17. Tristan

– Twelve years before The Fall –

Despite the high-rising walls of Liones' capital, the harsh winds bit through Elizabeth's long-sleeved dress. Another shiver rocked her body. The February snow had melted into dirty puddles, and icy water specks splashed up her boots whenever she stepped into one. But the cold winter air had yet to release its grasp on the city, and only the most crucial of tasks could tear man and child alike from the warmth of an oven fire. No wonder Elizabeth was the only soul in sight.

The graveyard had grown in the aftermath of the New Holy War and had pushed back the wild gardens that neighbored it, with only a handful of sallows left standing to accompany the monotony of sometimes more, sometimes less immaculate rows of tombstones which spread the length of the burial ground. By the layout design alone, Elizabeth identified whether she stood in a period with victims of war or peace; where there had been many dead to be buried, the graves aligned with more precision as supposed to the clusters before and after.

Elizabeth left the identical white tombs of war victims behind to where affordable slate was replaced with granite, and where objects of remembrance increased in frequency. Candles that no longer held fire, polished stones with words engraved on them, and wreaths of woodland crocus and black hellebore. She knew her destination well, had come here often over the past four years, and her feet found the way through the sallows and acres of unkempt grass on their own.

The dark stone before which she stopped bore no sign of difference to those around it, if not for the name and the absence of a date. The lettering had begun to faint, and Elizabeth let her fingers follow the engraved lines. In a few years the text would be intangible. She considered carving the name a second time before then.

Even now, she struggled to let go. To turn her back on the weather-tormented stone and never again place a single white feather at its feet. Meliodas hadn't come here since, not as far as she knew. Perhaps he wanted to forget. What would he think of her if he knew she hadn't left home for a short walk in need of fresh air? What would he think of her inability to let rest what had rested here for years?

"I knew you would hide here." Elizabeth turned to face Margaret, almost ashamed to have been found out like this – she should have been aware of her sister approaching. The splashes of water amidst the silence of the graveyard must have heralded her arrival long before she opened her mouth to speak. "You're easier to read than you think, Ellie."

"I hope you didn't come here for my sake alone," Elizabeth said with a glance at the bunch of flowers in Margaret's hands.

"Sadly not, I wanted to visit father's grave," Margaret replied. Her tone never drifted into bitterness; a strength Elizabeth admired her for. Margaret had always possessed a quite strength, so different from Veronica's brash manner, since Elizabeth had fled to her sisters out of fear from a thunderstorm. How far away these days seemed.

"But my visit has its merits since it gives me an excuse to drag you away from here," Margaret continued. "Katrina is hardly three days old, and you already mourn over the dead again. You were never scolded enough when we were kids and now you compensate by beating yourself with guilt. Don't you have congratulants to attend to?"

"Diane and King won't arrive before tomorrow, and Merlin has already returned to Camelot," Elizabeth said and stepped back from the patch of frozen grass in front of the tombstone. All these flimsy explanations didn't excuse the fact that she should be with Katrina, and Elizabeth was all too aware of the game of deception she played with herself.

Margaret's gaze shone with warmth when Elizabeth at last found the courage to meet her eyes. "I can't and I won't say that I understand how you feel. But I hope you will one day be able to move on, for Katrina and for yourself. No one can bring back the dead. Not even you."

No, she could not. With all this power to heal wounds, purge the darkness, and save those at the brink of death, she had been helpless that day. And with time and strength borrowed from those she loved, she would learn to accept this truth.

"Would you like to come with me to the Boar Hat then?" Elizabeth asked with a weak smile. "I think Katrina really likes you; her eyes always light up when she hears your voice. She'll be happy to see you again. And as her guardian, you have the responsibility to see her often."

"Nothing would make me happier."

Elizabeth only shot one look back to the tombstone as they left the graveyard together. She thanked the heavens and every might in this universe for the simple gift that Katrina was healthy and well. Whatever sacrifices it might take, she would make sure it stayed that way. Even if it meant moving on. Even if it meant never going back here to spare her daughter the sight of her mother in tears over what was long gone and buried.

* * *

Katrina had sworn to never again use the Time Crystal – not after what its dark magic had done to her last time. What she might do to those she cared about if she submitted herself to this sinister force played out in the back of her head on repeat. This suffocating sensation of being robbed of all of her energy, her free will, her _identity_ had never torn down her resistance with such ease, and she could call herself fortunate to have Gaius beside her. How he had managed to free her from the binding forces of the crystal, she had no idea, but she owed him her life. A debt she could never hope to repay.

But what she witnessed in front of the palace reduced all her resolve to smoke. Ivy was dying, Lance was dying, Errin was about to die at Mordred's hands. And no matter how entirely the grasp of the Time Crystal might corrupt her, Katrina couldn't stand aside while the last remaining people she loved were slaughtered in front of her.

The magic of _atemoto fibire_ feasted on her reserves, but she allowed it to happen; as long as she no longer had to endure the sight of them dying. The golden clock ran backwards until she would find the determination to stop the spell, resetting seconds, minutes, days, maybe years. Katrina had no way of telling. Time flew by. She hurried backwards, a pitiful creature enwrapped in a reverse race with the universe itself. No pull of ill intent overtook her, and she drifted around in an empty space of white and gold while present events turned into near and distant futures. Maybe the Time Crystal had at last fulfilled its mission and killed her, and she had passed on to the afterlife. But wasn't the afterlife a place of peace where all worries fall apart? Then why did her head hurt so much? And why wouldn't the dryness of her tongue go away? Half-conscious, she voiced _umaro _in the echo chambers of her head once she felt drained enough to fall asleep and never wake up.

Katrina didn't snap.

At least she was almost certain she didn't because she was able to take in her surroundings without any shadows intent to steal her senses, without even a shortage of breath. But she was also certain to have left behind Liones.

At first, everything appeared dark and shapeless, a void of nothingness similar to the mental prisons she had found herself in when she had used the Time Crystal before. But upon closer inspection, this assessment fell apart. Contours surrounded her, lines of reds and purples that contrasted the darkness. They took the shapes of rock formations or rivers. When Katrina raised her gaze upwards, a dim light diffused through the layers of shadows that might stand in for this place's sky. Large scaly creatures drifted above her, but when they opened their jaws, no sound found its way to Katrina's ears. The world had the appearance of a child's sketch on black parchment. And as Katrina's eyes adjusted to the strange light, she realized she was no longer alone. Or maybe he had stood there from the beginning.

The man in front of her was small, hardly taller than Katrina, were it not for the spiky black hair which added a couple inches to his height. Despite his size, something about him commanded respect, maybe even fear, a presence that gave the impression of far greater might than what his appearance suggested. With the metallic gloves and his red, high-collar robe, he had the exterior of a fighter, a war lord perhaps. His irises were pitch-black.

"I've always hoped to get to see you one day. But I must admit, it could have been under better circumstances." Katrina was surprised to find actual _warmth _in the way the man spoke to her. His voice and the way he pronounced her name reminded her of something, but she couldn't place the feeling of familiarity.

"What happened? Where am I?" she asked, even though the most pressing question on her mind was who this man was and why he claimed to know her.

"We are in a state between worlds," the man said and gestured at their surroundings which seemed to gain more substance with each passing minute. "You haven't quite left yours yet, but I'm afraid you will if you hold on to this item for much longer. As to what happened, well, your Demon powers overtook you, and that is why this realm is pulling you towards it."

Katrina first eyed the Time Crystal in her palm and then the mysterious man. "How can you know all that?"

His teeth showed as he grinned. "Well, if I didn't know, who else would? I am the Demon King, after all."

Katrina's heartbeat seemed to have forgotten its rhythm, and all she did was stare at the man – _the_ _Demon King_ – standing less than five feet away. If Katrina had raised her arm, she would have touched him. The Demon King, who had fought her parents in both Holy Wars, who had placed a curse on them lasting for three thousand years, who had brought more suffering to Britannia than any other might before or since. A monster. Then the puzzle pieces clicked together all on their own, and she almost laughed out loud.

"You are Zeldris?" she asked. She believed to recognize some of her father's youthful features in his face. Zeldris nodded, but the joyous expression fled from his face quickly thereafter.

"Katrina, you can't keep on using your Demon powers to this extent. I've seen you three times in this place before, and each time you came closer to my world, the Demon Realm. Since I'm able to communicate with you like this, it means you are in grave danger of becoming a part of this world. Permanently."

Katrina's voice trembled when she asked: "You mean I will become a Demon?"

Zeldris gave her an empathetic smile. But his eyes filled with bitterness. "You already are a Demon. At least a part of you is. And it is this part that is pulled into the Underworld, as humans like to call it. Meliodas and I have set up a gateway-spell that forces anyone who uses demonic powers without restraint to be imprisoned in the Demon Realm, for the safety of Britannia. It's the only bridge that still exist between our worlds."

"Why would my dad create a spell like that? He's the only one in Britannia who has Demon powers," Katrina asked. Then she realized the fault in her logic. Meliodas indeed wielded tremendous amounts of dark magic – but so did she.

"Precisely," Zeldris said and startled Katrina with the sharpness of this single word. "Until you were born, he was the only one who posed a threat to the human world of these disastrous proportions. He wields magic that outclasses everything a human has ever been capable of by a hundredfold. And sixteen years ago, he was more afraid than ever to lose control of his powers. Which is why he asked me to destroy every tie to the Demon Realm, except for this one spell. My stupid brother actually believed that could prevent him from hurting his friends and he woman he loved." Zeldris saddened smile was not without fondness. "He himself came here twice, but the last time his presence abruptly disappeared. It couldn't have been more than an hour ago."

That could only refer to the dome of dark magic that had risen over the capital on the day of The Fall. But a part Zeldris' explanation continued to bug Katrina. "What happened sixteen years ago?"

He tilted his head in a flash of irritation. "I shouldn't be surprised they never told you about it," he said then. "Meliodas is just as much of a moron as he's always been. In that case, it's not up to me to tell you about these things. You should hurry to leave this place anyway."

"I don't know how. The Time Crystal manipulates me every time I use it, but I need its help to go back." To save those she cared about.

"By taking back control on your own," Zeldris said and placed Katrina's hand holding the crystal in his own palm. She couldn't feel the metal of his gloves or the warmth spreading beneath them, but the gesture hit home all the same. "The spell only affects those who rampage with their powers without restraint. This power inside you rejects your command because you yourself reject it. You need to let go of that sentiment."

Katrina wasn't sure if she was able to. If her father had been so afraid of his powers that he was willing to risk banishment to the Demon Realm over using them, what reason did she have not to worry the same? But at the same time, wasn't Zeldris the living embodiment of a Demon who wasn't reduced to a monster craving for destruction?

When her attention turned inwards, Katrina identified the disarray of magic powers in an instance. Two opposing currents at war, threatening to drown her resolve the way they had before. Instead of fleeing to the Goddess' light, Katrina delved deeper into the depths of her Demon powers. She suppressed a shiver upon impact with the cold. Her way led her to a dive into endless, deep waters with the core of conflict lying at the very bottom of it all. The corrupt light of the Time Crystal shone through the darkness and signaled where she needed to reach out. A new surge of strength flooded her body, allowed her to go deeper – the familiar heat of her Demon powers. And with its help, Katrina plucked the crystal from the nexus of chaos and emerged from the depths. The water calmed, and ripples ran across the surface until they too disappeared. What remained was a deep pool of magic, eager to serve her will.

Katrina's eyes shot open as her surroundings started to fade. Zeldris gave her a last encouraging smile. "It was nice to finally meet you, Katrina. Tell my brother that he should try damn harder to stay in his realm. I'll kill him if I see his face again."

Then he was gone, and Katrina was hit headfirst with the brilliant colors of the human realm. She shoved the questions about the past of sixteen years ago aside. Cool, rich air filled her dry throat, and she grinned at the lack of disorientation and exhaustion that used to accompany her expeditions with the Time Crystal. She had made it. She wasn't quite sure to which point in time she had travelled, but that hardly mattered in the face of her success. She had regained control. And if fate was generous, she would remain in control from here on out.

* * *

An adept magic user did not need to accompany a spell with a word-based command, be it spoken out loud or phrased in silence. Magic didn't limit itself to arbitrary sentence constructions, but was rather dependent on an individual's will and control. Gaius had studied the ancient language, the catalyst between a spellcaster's mind and the magic they harnessed, from the day he had first read Merlin's ancient textbooks with the stuttering voice of a four-year-old, and he relied on the familiarity of the words even when his mind was clear and focused.

But as Katrina faded into light and Mordred's dark presence approached, Gaius did what he would have found unimaginable not too long ago: he reacted. Without a plan or a search in his memory for the academic vocabulary, he bent the magic to his will.

Mordred's movement slowed to a halt, and Nashtar's superior grin froze on his face as the rooting spell took effect. The incantation lacked the strength to immobilize them, but the diversion bought Gaius the time he needed to dash forward and reach the empty space between Lance, Ivy, and Errin.

"Gaius?!" Lance coughed before another tremor befell him as his advanced healing fought against the dire injuries he had obtained.

Gaius had no time to answer. The orange aura around Mordred shattered, and the steal of his longsword blinded Gaius as he charged at the group of four. A heartbeat before Mordred struck him down, Gaius raised his voice. "_Mashi sumeti io loshiho sumetumaro kiatohara_!"

Mordred's sharp features and dark eyes disappeared behind the brightness of teleportation magic, and all that remained was an afterimage in Gaius' mind. The castle's courtyard was replaced by river shores, and polished, grey stones glistened in the afternoon light. The heavy smoke born from infernos inside the capital darkened the northern sky, and the city itself glowed red like a second sun between the hills. Gaius retched as the taste of ash mingled with the herb cent of cedars, and the scenery melted before his eyes.

No, not the world was falling apart. He had failed to supply the advanced spell with a sufficient amount of magic, so his body paid the price instead. Gaius knew as much. But understanding would not have stopped him from tumbling to the ground if Errin hadn't stepped forward to stabilize him. She flinched as Gaius' limp body crashed against her chest where the breastplate was dented from her encounter with Nashtar.

"Can someone please explain to me what exactly just happened?" Lance asked, but his question was undercut by another wave of self-healing, inflicted by the Fountain of Youth in his genes. His eyes clouded and he struggled to focus on his surroundings.

Ivy freed herself from his arms to inspect his wounds, even though she had to fight against her own disarray, brought forth by the headwound that stained her hair red. "Thanks Gaius," she said once she had made sure Lance would not dare to die on her. Their gazes met for a second before dizziness forced Ivy to close her eyes.

Errin allowed Gaius to sit down. Her breathing rattled as she lowered herself beside him. From the sound of it, Nashtar had broken multiple ribs. "Where's Katrina? Wasn't she with you?" she asked. The difficulty to speak and attain oxygen at the same time drained her face of its color.

"She used the Time Crystal," Gaius said, and studied the patch of grass under his feet as to not look at them. "I wanted to warn her, but she was gone before I could interfere. In her emotional state, she will not be able to control her powers… not when she is alone." And that was by far the part of the story he dreaded the most.

Her last endeavor to control the Time Crystal had bordered on disaster – and back then Katrina had yet to find out that her parents had fallen victim to Mordred's forces once again. After everything she had witnessed, her will was no more than a fragile hurdle for the Time Crystal to overcome, and before she would regain control, the item would already possess her, feeding of her magical power until nothing remained.

"Hey, it's not your fault," Lance reassured. "I should've been more careful against Nashtar and made sure he was really down. You're the one who got us out of that mess. Thanks for that. I'll repay you next time."

Ivy fixated Gaius, and uncertainty brimmed in her eyes. "Will there even be a next time? Without Katrina and without the crystal, we can't turn back time, and we can't find her either. And the Sins are still dead… it was all for nothing."

Ivy had a point. Since The Fall had taken place in almost the exact same way with the same end result despite their efforts to change the stream of time, they had no way to know how far they would need to go in order to save the Sins and the citizens of Liones. And as Ivy had reminded, Katrina held the Time Crystal, the most convenient option there was when wishing to change the past or present. But it was by no means the only one.

Gaius sat up straighter to ensure he had everyone's attention. "Apart from the Time Crystal, there are other methods of meddling with time, including some that do not possess the form of an item or trinket. There exists a place outside of our limited perception of space and time, and if we were to get there, we will be able to not only alter past events but also find Katrina. We need to find a way to journey into the Time Realm."

Confusion stirred up like a tangible essence. "The what now?"

* * *

Katrina decided she was best advised to find out to which time period she had catapulted herself to before making use of the Time Crystal's magic to escape. Otherwise she might end up in the future, or another point in time she harbored no desire to visit; the New Holy War for example. Her surroundings didn't offer much information to work with, other than the fact that Liones' castle towers crowned the city scape with no sign of destruction; the blue shingles atop the massive limestone walls resembled the image in her memories. But asking someone on the streets about which year she had stumbled into, didn't seem like the best idea.

The courtyard, which had marked a battlefield when she had last stood here, lay deserted in the dim light of morning. Other than the couple Holy Knights standing guard at the inner gates – who threw her curious looks as she emerged from inside the palace but then dismissed her as a maid's child and allowed her to pass – Katrina was spared human encounters. A handful of stray cats rummaged through cans in a house entrance but disappeared as Katrina approached. The weather had its part to play in the emptiness of the streets; thick layers of snow had been shoved to the side of the street to ease passage for travelers and citizens, but if the dark sky was any indicator, the snow-free corridor wouldn't last long.

Katrina shivered against a gust of cold air that attacked her face like a physical punch and shoved her hands deeper into the pockets of her dress. There had to be a reference to tell her where she was somewhere in the city.

In front of a closed inn, she thought she had tracked down a clue. Bu the signboard hunched between the inn's door and the unlit window of the street level floor turned out to be a disappointment. Other than a wanted poster for a grimly looking man named Rience and a handful of scribbled notes calling to this or that kind of protest, Katrina found nothing of use. Someone warned about the surge of an epidemic in the eastern corners of Camelot and advised to be careful when buying products from that region. No announcement for any event or festivity that could have provided Katrina with a date.

Frustrated, Katrina left the signboard behind and marched onward. She wished for the fluffy, pink mittens stored in the lowest drawer of her dresser back home to make up for her light summer dress. Or a decent pair of water-resilient boots. She sidestepped another hill of turned-over snow as her ears picked up on a faint sobbing sound, carried to her by the wind. Katrina followed the length of the street, rounded two corners, and found herself standing before Liones' graveyard. The metal spikes of the surrounding fence pierced the winter air, and the moss-covered tombstones slouched beyond like a pack of wolves about to charge; Katrina had never liked this place, and had passed by in a hurry when one of her play sessions had led her here.

And she would have done the same now, had her aunt Margaret not stepped through the metal gates the next moment. In her arms she balanced a wailing Jennine who couldn't be older than three. Gilthunder had his arms wrapped around Margaret in an attempt to comfort her, even though grief seemed to shake him more than her. They took no notice of Katrina standing expressionless at the outside of the metal fencing. Only Percival, who trudged behind his parents and kicked the snow with every step, stared at her as if he had seen a winter spirit. He tucked at his mother's sleeve a couple of times but with no effect, and the family slowly made its way back to the palace.

Someone must have died.

Almost in trance, Katrina walked through the gates. She barely registered the squeals of the rusty angles.

Her search for the cause for her discomfort proved more difficult than she had expected because those that remained from the funeral didn't utter a single sound, and their presence was obscured by the snowflakes that had begun to drift from the bitter-cold sky. She wished to turn around and forget about the occurrence, but her feet directed her farther and farther through the labyrinth of graves, driven by a question Katrina had buried for so long.

They had all assembled in an open circle around a newly set-up grave stone, its white surface not yet tainted by the ravages of weather. Merlin, Gowther, and Escanor stood huddled together, scarred by varying degrees of sorrow held at bay by crumbling masks of composure. On the other far side, Ban held Elaine in his arms, and their compulsive, calm breaths created puffy clouds in the air; otherwise, they appeared to have turned to statues. Diane, showing the signs of advanced pregnancy, had her hand clawed into King's, so that his fingers had turned white, and silent tears ran down her face. He seemed to scarcely take notice of any of it.

But her parents drew Katrina's eyes the most. They stood in front of the tombstone, their backs turned to the others. And while mere inches separated them, the empty space had all the resemblance of a border neither of them intended to cross.

No one spoke a word. The snowfall became more vicious with every passing minute.

Gowther turned with the full knowledge that his presence was no longer desired. Merlin and the sniffing Escanor followed on his heels.

"It might be better if you were to leave," Gowther said as he passed Katrina. His eyes stared straight through her, into the sorrowful mass of white crystals plunging to the ground by the hundreds.

Ban's face had long turned into a stone mask bar of emotions when he turned to King. "You should get her inside," he said. And even though he kept his voice down, the words bit into the silence and echoed through the graveyard until the snow muffled the sound.

King, after significant delay, used his free arm to guide Diane away, who was shivering from both cold and emotional exhaustion. Gears driven by worried thoughts turned in King's head as he passed Katrina, and their two pairs of feet created a trail of footprints amidst all the white. Elaine floated a few feet behind them as if to make sure they wouldn't stumble.

Ban remained at a distance, his hands hidden in the pockets of his coat.

Maybe it was because she thought they had all left, or maybe her façade had crumbled under the weight of the snow. In a fit of madness, Elizabeth fell to the ground, buried her hands in the snow atop the small coffin, and cried without any restraint. Hunched over and on her knees, Elizabeth lamented. Her tears melted the ice crystals at her feet and formed dirty puddles that would soon freeze over. Meliodas stood beside her, mere inches away, but did nothing other than stare at the inscription carved into the tombstone.

The granite held no date of birth or death, no title, no words of remembrance and comfort. Only one name.

Tristan.

The clock of golden lines marked sixteen years before The Fall. And Meliodas and Elizabeth had just buried their first child.

Katrina stood unmoving a handful of yards from her parents and the grave of her brother for so long that her body had stopped supplying her fingers with blood, and she received no response when she attempted to move them. After a small eternity, Elizabeth's cries ceased until soundless tremors shook her body. By then, Meliodas had turned his back on her and looked through Ban without a spark of life as his best friend raised his voice.

"If there's anything I can do for you two, just say so," Ban said and placed a hand on Meliodas' shoulder. "That goes for all of us and without saying, but you probably need a reminder once in a while."

Meliodas shoved Ban's hand aside. "Sorry, Ban. There's nothing you could do. Not now. I'll never be able to make up for what I did to her. If she at least hated me, I wouldn't have to see her cry like this."

"Would you stop it with that crap now? I know you feel terrible about this because you're a self-centered prick, but I've never met two people more in love with each other, so be a man and go to her. We're all here for you, but let's be real, King and Diane have their fair share of worries, and I can't always stick around to tell you what do. And Elizabeth needs you, not any of us."

"I should be angry at you for calling me a self-centered prick…" Meliodas said with a hollow smile. He made the first heavy steps past Ban, and his boots crunched the snow below.

"Where are you going?"

"I'm gonna make sure I won't hurt her like this another time."

"Meliodas, none of this is your fault. Not even Merlin could have foreseen that something like this would happen…"

"I could have _killed _her! All I could think when his heart stopped beating was how much I hated every last creature in this world because they got to live, and he did not. I wanted to see all of them burn in hell, just like my father did. All this power I took from him, all the terrible things he taught me, every scar he gave me has turned me into a monster that I can no longer control. I could have killed her…"

"But you didn't."

Meliodas tilted his head upwards, exposed his face to the snowflakes, and the droplets ran down his features until they were caught by the corners of his lips twisted into this hollow smile. "Some comfort that is. Goodbye, Ban."

Then Meliodas disappeared within the dense curtains of snowfall. Leaving Ban behind to mutter, 'damn it'. He waited a couple minutes – maybe holding onto the belief that Meliodas would re-emerge against all odds – before he tore Elizabeth from the grave of her son, Katrina's older brother, who hadn't had the chance to live in this world for even a day.

Katrina crossed the short distance to the tombstone with stiff, laborious steps and looked at the open grave. The simple coffin of chestnut wood only offered room for a newborn and would soon be covered with earth and snow to never see the light of day again.

Katrina let her hand run over the grooves in the wood and imagined how her life might have changed with an older brother by her side. They might have gotten into heated arguments like Ivy and Lance did so frequently, and at the end of the day, Tristan would have ruffed her hair, saying that he would forgive her and that he was sorry. He would have helped her 'borrow' Elizabeth's precious china so that they could play tea in the attic. He might have become a Holy Knight in training like Lance, never shy of teasing his friend in good fun with help from Ivy. Whenever the burden of Katrina's Demon powers had overwhelmed her, he would have offered words of support. A caring hand on her shoulder. His drawings next to hers on the signboard in the Boar Hat's tavern room. He might have fallen in love with Errin's resolve or Ivy's fierceness, and Katrina would promise to hide his secret behind seven locked doors with a devious grin. After her parents had died during The Fall, she would have had him to rely on, and maybe Tristan instead of Gaius would have saved her from the Time Crystal's control over her powers.

But the story she imagined was nothing more than wishful thinking, images vague and fleeting and entirely fake. Katrina would never be granted the opportunity to learn who her brother was because he had died years before her birth. Before today, she hadn't known he existed. Her parents had established a grand lie that required the discretion of all other Sins as well as outsiders like Gilthunder and Margaret – for no other reason than to deny Katrina the chance to imagine a life in which she grew up with Tristan.

Katrina trembled as she brushed the snow from his grave. Without all the tragedy that had led her to the Time Crystal, would she have ever found out?

More than ever before, Katrina needed to prevent the events of The Fall, not only because she missed her parents, but because she wanted to know the reason, the reason why they had lied to her. They had the right to forget if they wanted to – but Katrina wanted, _needed_ a chance to bid her brother farewell.

She stood up and brushed the hair out of her face with fingers cold as death. The weight of the crystal had never felt as insubstantial as she held the magical item in her palm, no longer a tool of terror but one she could rely on to bring her where she needed to go. She gave the scenery and the life she had imagined so vividly for a mere moment a last longing look. Cursed and divine magic coursed through her veins as she allowed the Time Crystal to amplify her potential, so that it might help her save those she loved.

Tristan was dead. But her friends were alive and waited for her.

* * *

**(A/N)** Ah yes, the Tristan reveal. I've been waiting to share this one for a while. This was one of the first plot points for the story and Katrina's arc in particular I came up with. Long before Nakaba made Tristan canon to be exact. I do feel kind of awful about killing him and about all the suffering I made Elizabeth go through. Again. I considered to bring him back in some form, but that wouldn't sit right with me. This universe has too many fake deaths already.

Anyway, I hoped you liked this chapter and the way I handled the twist. I'll hopefully see you in the next chapter. _Which reminds me that I need to work on my messy update schedule..._ Until then!


	18. Foray into Unexplored Territories

– A few months before The Fall –

"Lance, Lance. LANCE!" someone assaulted his eardrums with a repeated sing-song of the same name.

As the owner of said name, Lance felt somewhat obliged to react to the call, but he refused to crane open his eyes more than halfway. The motion required more willpower than he had to spare. So much for Fairies needing less sleep than humans. That attribute had to be buried especially deep in his genetic code.

Past the obscurity of Lance's half-opened eyelids, Aura whipped back and forth on her heels, an oddity in and off itself since she only set foot on solid ground in preparation for sleep. And while Lance could imagine nothing more desirable than prolonging the comfort of his bed, Aura was merciless and tore at his blanket to expose his feet.

"Just let me die here in case the apocalypse is upon us," Lance grumbled and sank further into his pillow. "I had to fend off Ivy's attempts to punch me into oblivion for the entirety of yesterday, I need time to rest."

Without the stubbornness of sleepiness, Lance understood why Ivy had declared war on him. She would need time to accept his decision to leave the Forest and train as a Holy Knight. But the fact that she had found out from Cynthia didn't bode well for her friendliness towards Lance. He should have told her earlier; he knew how much she hated to be left out. But a sleepy brain was a lazy brain, and so Lance shoved that thought aside and freed his blanket from Aura's grip.

She chuckled, but her determination to chase him out of bed didn't waver. "Come on Lance, it's raining, please."

All the more reason to not set foot outside, or so one might think. Aura, however, who had never been sick or felt cold her entire life, enjoyed nothing more than her hair soaking with rainwater and the sound of drops splashing into puddles. And Lance was the last one to stand in her way, even if it meant skipping on much needed recovery time.

"Okay, okay, I'm awake and ready to go," he said and sat up straight as proof.

Aura smiled a heavenly smile that could make kingdoms go to war for her sake and stepped away from his bedside. Lance used the space to fetch up his light-fabric jacket, threw it over his tunic, and reached for his boots. He had escaped bed-ridden weeks of sickness thus far, but he wasn't going to take chances – not too many unnecessary ones at least.

Aura didn't wait longer than necessary and floated through the glass-less window of Lance's room while he opted for the more civilized route through the door. He tiptoed into the living room, decorated with a multitude of furniture made from all kinds of wood and held in colors of green and brown. Safe for Elaine's collection of flowers which occupied every surface. If his parents were already awake, they made no sound to show for it, but judging from the forgotten bottle of ale between two pots of tulips and daisies, they had acted out their shared passion for liquor last night, so they shall be forgiven for sleeping in longer. Lance avoided the noisy creak in the wooden tiles and headed out the door to meet up with Aura. Honey-colored strands and a big smile were plastered on her face.

The house of Lance's parents was the only one of its kind in the Fairy King's Forest, so they had no neighbors to worry about. Theoretically, any number of Fairies could sleep in the treetops or nestled between roots for Lance and Aura to disturb at such unholy hour, but most of them liked to keep their distance. As simplistic as the hut was, the display of human housing created a rift in nature, a rift Fairies considered unpleasant. Ban and Elaine had argued back and forth over building a house on Fairy territory, but in the end, Ban had admitted that he couldn't go without his cooking hobby forever. And so, the Fairy King had begrudgingly agreed to forbid the plant life to retake the clearing. Otherwise the house would have fallen into ruin in a month's time.

Lance shivered as a droplet of water trailed down the insides of his collar to follow the line of his spine. Aura meanwhile attempted to catch the raindrops with her open palms under hearty giggles. She looked like she hadn't found wonder of comparable magnitude in her life before.

"Do you want me to show you something?" Lance asked while trying to keep up with Aura's faster pace. After all, she didn't need to watch out for puddles or roots. One of the many perks of flight. "It's a secret, so you'll have to keep quiet about it."

Aura nodded with wide eyes before a grin burst out on her face due to the excess of seriousness of his tone.

"Okay, then try to keep up!"

With that, Lance dashed through the foliage to his right. Aura would no doubt catch up to him without breaking a sweat, but he knew she would enjoy the challenge all the same. Sure enough, Aura swooped past the low-hanging branches of stone oaks and common ashes and circled him with a series of loops.

"I'll always be able to keep up with you," she exclaimed.

"I'm counting on it."

Lance had walked the path to his secret up and down many times over the past days and found the aisle within the undergrowth without fail. He was certain even Ivy was unaware of its location, so it had come as the ideal place to allow his thoughts to quiet after the many exhausting arguments he had had with his mother about his plans for the future. At least she had yet to involve her brother, the Fairy King. Despite the well of supporting words King had offered his nephew, he was the last person Lance wanted to make an enemy of. He liked his home – and he liked the option to return to it every once in a while.

Lance pushed aside the sparse branches blocking their path to reveal what lay beyond. The earth clipped off on the far side of the broom shrubbery and formed a cauldron-shaped chasm, covered from eyes to all sides by dense foliage. The chasm measured about ten feet in height before its bottom made way for a shallow pond. A drove of heavy raindrops distorted the water's surface and created an odd concerto with a single type of instrument.

Aura's face lit up like the sun. "It's so beautiful. And no one apart from you knows about it?"

"No one except you and me now," Lance reassured. "There used to be a big tree here, but it was killing the smaller plant life around, so your dad had to expose it to decay. But without the tree, the earth that was loosened from the tree's roots had nothing to hold onto anymore and fell in on itself, and only the sturdier cliffs remained. And over the last couple years, the hole filled up with water to create this lake."

Lance hardly remembered the original tree; it had decayed to return its life energy to the forest years before Aura had been born.

Sporting a joyous smile, Aura floated into the open and hovered a handful of inches above the pond's surface. Lance followed with a little more caution and used roots reaching out of the cliffside to heave himself downward. He landed on a stack of slate plates, spacious enough to fit two people and the only place in the chasm where he could keep his feet dry.

Aura closed her eyes and hummed a series of three notes. The opening of a waltz. Then she raised her arms and began her dance. With sweeping steps, she glided across the pond, and the rain itself seemed to halt and watch. The chasm turned into a golden ballroom and the pond into a dancefloor. A million candles sparkled above their heads. Whenever a step allowed for it, Aura dipped her toes into the water and marveled at the ripple effect. The dancefloor transformed, the illusion flickered, and when Lance craned his neck, the candles had disappeared.

In their stead a million raindrops hovered in the air above the chasm, frozen in place by Aura's magical ability, «Catastrophe». A canopy of waterdrops. Each and every single one of them caught the light like a transient diamond, and aligned to create the ornate vault of a ballroom glittering with gold.

When Aura finished the last turn to look at Lance with a grin, her magical ability faltered and released the drops. The flood came crashing down at once, and by the end, Lance and Aura were wet down to the bones.

They huddled at the shore where the overhang provided a minimum amount of cover from the rain and watched the rain splash into the pond. Aura curled into Lance's shoulder, in ignorance of his drenched jacket, and weaved patterns in the air to make a quartet of leaves dance. Her hair tickled his neck.

"I'll miss you when you'll be away in Liones," Aura said and buried her face deeper into the fabric of his jacket.

"And I'm gonna miss you and all the times my clothes soaked up entire rivers because of you," he said and nudged her side to make her giggle. Drops splashed into the pond.

She fell silent for a while, waited for the sun to edge past the clouds to catch the last stubborn droplets, before she asked with a small voice: "Will you come back to me sometimes?"

"I'll always come back to my favorite girl in this world. And one day, I'm even gonna beat you at tag, just you wait."

* * *

After numerous attempts at explaining the concept of a realm in which time represented a physical dimension rather than an unstoppable force to drive the world forward, Gaius doubted that the others had grasped the idea. They either mistrusted the existence of the Time Realm itself or Gaius' ability to find the way. He could not fault them for either; his limited knowledge of the Time Realm and his far from flawless expertise with teleportation magic sounded discouraging in his ears as well.

"Maybe we should just try to find King Percival or Grandmaster Howzer. They shouldn't be too far away, and they might have an idea how to deal with this," Lance broke the silence with a frustrated look at the smoldering ruins of Liones in the distance.

While his injuries had healed, the same could not be said about Errin or Ivy. Neither were in the condition to engage in combat or flee should Mordred send a search party to their location. Even the short swim to the opposite shore of the Tribuit would exceed Errin's capabilities.

Ivy shook her head, a motion that caused her visible discomfort. "Howzer stayed behind to defend the capital. There's no way he got out of there in time."

"I know I can bring us to the Time Realm. All I ask is a little more time to find the exact spell words," Gaius said. "If could remember all the lip movements Merlin used to send me there…"

"We could at least try to find someone to patch us up before we dive back in," Lance suggested and glared at the makeshift bandage around Ivy's arm. "Every time we run into Nashtar, he hacks us to pieces because we're either unprepared or in a lousy condition. And with Mordred, that won't look any different. We don't even know what forces that guy sent against Liones this time around, but it sure did the trick."

"It doesn't matter how he did it. We won't be able to do anything about it anyway," Errin said. She was lying on her back, with the outer breastplate of her armor removed to not further strain her broken ribs.

Ivy tensed and shot Errin a poisonous glare. "So, you're saying you give up?"

"Yes, and maybe you should consider doing the same. Mordred didn't depend on the Colossai to enact his plan, so we can assume that nothing we do will change the outcome. The destruction of Liones is unavoidable."

"Alright, then we go after Mordred. If he's dead, he can't murder anyone."

"Could you two stop it for a second?" Lance cut in. "We're all in terrible condition and are feeling down, but it's not just our families who depend on us. Katrina does too." He shifted his attention to Gaius. "The whole Time Realm dilemma aside, please tell me you have a healing spell up your sleeve. I can't listen to this any longer."

"It is impossible for me to heal someone without an item or an incantation orb, I apologize. Magic such as that is reserved for Goddesses and their disciples, the Druid Clan."

"Fantastic," Lance said before letting his gaze wander southeast, to a cluster of trees in the peak of summer vitality. The summit of a pointy roof caught the light in between the rich green of leaves and fixated Lance's eyes like a magnet.

"You think Elaine's still there?" Ivy asked softy.

"If Mordred didn't get her this time too…"

Gaius franticly blinked to tear his gaze away from the two cousins sitting side by side, one less hopeful than the other, keeping on for the sake of keeping on. Their families might depend on them to prevent their deaths – but they depended on Gaius. And if he didn't want to disappoint them, he would have to ignore his perfectionistic tendencies and improvise for once in his life. While the right words or the necessary order remained a mystery, he might get away with shuffling around those words he did know.

"In case you are not determined to wait any longer, I suggest I attempt to teleport us now," he said.

"You sure about this, Gaius?" Ivy eyed him as though the responsibility on his shoulders would cripple his spirit. "You just used up all your magical resources to get us out of Liones."

"It is by far the most reliable pathway we can take. And if I may rely a little on your energy, the costs should be of no hinderance." Gaius lacked the courage to mention that he was not at all sure about his ability to bring them to the Time Realm. Not when the odds were stacked against him into an overwhelming tower. But any further delays would only fuel his insecurities.

Errin rose from her resting spot with a hiss as the movement impinged on her injuries. Lance offered her a worried look and an outstretched hand that she chose to accept to everyone's surprise. With how huddled together they stood, Gaius' worry about the complex range amplification of the spell eased, but he nevertheless felt the cold creep into his bones. His fingers were icy when he placed them together for a snap. All his experience, all the hours spent bowed over textbooks had led to this crucial test.

Eyes of amethyst, ruby and citrine rested on him as he recited the words in his head one last time before voicing them with absolute clarity. "_Mashi sumeti io atemoto sumetumaro kiatohara_."

Then he snapped his fingers, and white light erased the world.

The journey from a physical world into one where time was the only variable dimension felt like Gaius was being torn from his body. His shell fragmented, and the pieces scattered in the world he left behind to abandon his mind without a form to call home. His self dissolved into a cluster of panicked thoughts, short-lived and disoriented, a flickering candle on the cusp of burning out.

As Gaius' vision returned, the vast, unending space of the Time Realm greeted him, and his body was reduced to a vague idea. The rules and limitations of Britannia were nothing but a faint memory, a construct for narrow-minded people which had lost all meaning. Gaius directed his attention to his sides, but if his companions had gained access to the Time Realm, they were as shapeless as he was. He called out to them, but the words never left the insides of his head.

The colorful time strings bared no difference compared to his last visit, and apart from them, the Time Realm lacked the kinds of landmarks or distinct shapes that would have made it feasible to tell where he was or where he needed to go. A place as endless and uncharted as last time. The answers had to reside in this void, but a search for them or the others might stretch to infinity. Gaius inspected his surroundings for one of the light phenomena linked to the usage of excessive time magic, but found nothing of sorts. And other than a handful stray specimens, the time strings kept their distance and traversed the nothingness far out of reach.

But not all of them did. An aimlessly drifting string came too close in its panicked circles and initiated the barrage of images Gaius had no time to brace himself for.

Yet the image that flashed before his inner eye was his own face. Some features were exaggerated, others missed clarity, but Gaius was without a doubt staring at himself. A version of himself, created from memory, a scribbled drawing rather than a mirror image. Then the image faded to make room for Katrina, Errin, and Ivy. More faces appeared and disappeared, flared up and burned down, replaced by the next vision. A lush forest, a young girl hovering over a lake, her hair the color of burnt orange. Ivy cried, Ivy smiled, Ivy punched him in the face, all at the same time. Ban and Elaine handed him his birthday present, a finely detailed puzzle box. The porcelain face of a Fairy covered in blood, their name on his lips. A painting of a raging sea somewhere in Liones' castle, and the hand of a child following the artist's bold lines. Errin's golden eyes looked up at him, Ban ruffed his hair. The distant scent of sunflowers filled his nose.

Gaius pulled back and stared at the rigid time string before him. Understanding eradicated all doubt. What he had seen hadn't been limited by a point in time but by an individual and their memories.

The pulsating string of light was Lancelot.

The content of what he had seen fled his mind, like a dream dissolves into an estranged feeling after waking up, but the meaning of this contact stayed intact: In this realm, time instead of space was the primary physical dimension, and individuals roamed said dimension with differing speeds and amounts of detours, in pairs, groups, or alone. And the previous times Gaius had witnessed a string radiating with blinding light, it had always been Katrina's life force breaking the boundaries of time.

No matter the grandeur of this discovery, Gaius' objective stayed the same: to find the cord of golden light. And making sure his companions understood that they needed to do the same. In the best of scenarios, Lance had realized the nature of the time strings after coming into contact with Gaius, which left Errin and Ivy with lackluster context. And while Gaius could repeat the process of memory exchange and hope for the best, he felt no desire to dig around in their minds. Or have his own mind dissected by one of them. He felt bad enough knowing that Lance had – without malice but nonetheless without welcome – looked into his head.

He closed his eyes, or rather did the equivalent without actual eyes to see with, and concentrated on Katrina's presence. Other than Merlin, who he had spent all his life with, Katrina's magical aura was the most familiar to him, a force overwhelming and otherworldly like the sun yet tainted by inner shadows. Her light had to wander somewhere in the endlessness of the Time Realm, no matter where the crystal had taken her. All he needed to do was locate her.

The life essences of Lance, Errin and Ivy were so distinct and _loud_ that Gaius struggled to look past them and extent his spiritual gaze beyond. He drifted along with an invisible current. But the gravitational pull he had been looking for was there, no doubt, the incarnation of the sun, brighter still then he remembered. His eyes darted open, and straight ahead a string of light brimmed with the magic of the Time Crystal. Katrina.

He hovered next to her in an instance and dove into the depths without a second thought. Katrina's face flashed before his inner eyes, verifying what he had already known, before he shut out the flood of images and let himself be carried to the point in time she travelled to.

When the light died down, Gaius found himself back in Britannia. The outer walls of Liones' capital spiraled to his left, this time without smoke and destruction to distort the picture. Liones' crest baring a pair of winged horses flattered halfway raised on uncounted flagpoles. The city lay in the warmth of a summer day, sometime before The Fall. And Katrina's presence hummed strongly within these walls.

* * *

"You could've at least given us a head's up before racing off to that shining light like a desperate moth," Lance grumbled, but he wasn't mad with Gaius – not after he had managed to get them both in and out of that forsaken Time Realm.

An experience Lance _never_ wanted to repeat. That place devoid of any logic he could wrap his head around spooked him more than all the crazy stuff he had seen during the past weeks – maybe excluding Katrina's demonic possessions.

"I apologize. I should have indeed made sure that you would follow me," Gaius said and looked at his feet. Maybe he was more of a devoted moth than a desperate one.

In Lance's book, they had lucked their way out of their predicament. If he hadn't had that weird memory exchange with Gaius – a lucky shot in and off itself –, he would have never figured out that those floating cords were individuals. And while Gaius had briefed them about the brighter lights and their link to the workings of the Time Crystal, he doubted to have reacted in time. Errin luckily had, and without one of those mind chats no less. When Gaius' had raced towards the light, she had taken the lead, and by shier miracle, all of them had reunited outside of Liones capital. The trip had all the markings of a lucky streak. And luck had the tendency to run out when relied on too often.

"Any idea what time this is?" Errin asked.

"Not without additional input," Gaius said while climbing down the hillside to enter the city as fast as possible. "But Katrina is here, without a doubt."

"Yeah, she and her younger self that will completely freak out when we appear out of the blue," Ivy said as she made an effort to catch up to Gaius.

"Can that happen?" Lance asked. He had wondered about the ruleset before, but had never settled on an answer. Truth be told, he felt better without devoting an excess of brain capability to time travel. "Can two version of the same individual run around in the same point in time? And could they even _run into _each other?"

"Highly unlikely. With how the time strings function, it is safe to assume that a soul, while it can exist beyond its time period, cannot be present twice in one point in time. The version of the time-traversing individual that originally occupied a space in time will vanish when its future self appears."

Ivy made a face. "So, if we all used to be home right now, does that mean we _disappeared _from there as soon as we arrived here from inside the Time Realm?" The implications made Lance cringe. He didn't look forward to explaining to his parents why he had vanished from home without a trace.

"Presumably, if my assessment of the Time Realm is correct."

Lance kept an ironic 'fantastic' to himself and followed Gaius towards the city gates in silence. In spite of the enormous amounts of energy the high-level teleportation spell had to have cost Gaius, his pace was filled with energy as he shoved through the crowds spilling in and out of the city. Though the fact that he didn't levitate spoke for itself. And while Lance tried to keep an eye on Gaius amidst the crowd, he repeated the course of events that had led them here in his head.

As far as he could tell, Mordred had made use of his loyal Holy Knights instead of relying on some other mythical force or creature. His ability to tell apart magic presences lacked precision, but Lance had felt nothing out of the ordinary In Liones. Nashtar had been a bigger pain in the ass, that's all. But Lance questioned whether the combined forces of the Knights of the Round Table amounted to enough fighting power to take on the Seven Deadly Sins. The Holy Knights of Camelot might stand among the mightiest humans in all Britannia, but they remained _humans_ nonetheless. Humans had to rely on their numbers to challenge the other clans – and last time Lance checked, Mordred didn't have enough loyalist to have numbers be the deciding factor.

He was missing a vital piece to the puzzle, but his mind was too overflown with fragments to figure out the riddle. Flashes of memories from Gaius kept attacking his thoughts, a cluster of colors and emotions without specifics. All he remembered was a feeling of something evil and sinister creeping towards him and a deathly cold. It was giving him a headache. He needed a break. They all did.

"Lance, tell me I'm crazy, but think I know where we are," Ivy said. She had slowed to match his lost-in-thought stride, eyes trailing to the outline of Liones' castle.

"I always knew you were crazy, and we're in Liones in case you didn't get the memo."

"Sometimes I wonder if you're playing dumb just for the fun of it." Ivy blocked his path with her uninjured right arm and pointed into the direction she had been locking at. "_That_ is our telltale sign as to which point in time we're at."

Even after following the line leading from her index finger, Lance couldn't tell what Ivy found so curious. The castle was undamaged, hinting at an era of relative peace, the crest on the omnipresent flags blowing in the wind was the one Liones had borne for the last couple decades, and other than the fact that it was summer and around midday, he couldn't read anything out of the sky either. A blue sky filled with clouds and half-raised flags. Nothing worth…

Lance drew in a sharp breath. Percival had lectured him about the matter a couple of times, but he had never held any particular interest for the royal etiquette – and that included the language of flags.

Th nations of Britannia commonly pulled up flags with the dominant crest as high as possibly to showcase the country's might and strength over their dominion. If, however, the leader of this nation died, the flags would be removed for a mourning period of a week – less in times of war. The in-between state of half-raised flags then represented a respectful tribute to the leader of a different nation who had passed away. Lance had only seen this occur once.

To honor the greatest king of Britannia in Lance's generation, all flags of Liones had been lowered halfway for an entire week. Meaning that Britannia mourned the death of King Arthur – which had played a significant part in kickstarting the downward spiral of events that would culminate in The Fall of Liones at Mordred's hands.

The fact that Ivy had caught onto that detail was certainly… surprising. "This means we still got a month before Mordred starts his warfare," Lance said. "How the hell did you manage to discover that so quickly?"

Ivy smiled. "I've spent too much time around you."

Lance couldn't decide if he wanted to grin or pout, so he opted for both, which, judging from Ivy's expression, did its part in downgrading his credibility. For a split second, he to forgot how high the stakes were and played pretend that they were back home, teasing each other to no end until their parents lost their last remnants of sanity. But Ivy wincing as the merchant, who pushed past them in a hurry, hit her injured arm with his cargo, catapulted him out of the bliss of the moment and reminded him that they still had a long way to go. And the end of this way lay obscured in mist.

"The sooner we get to Katrina, the earlier you and Errin can heal up," Lance said and marched to where he had last seen Gaius disappear behind a corner.

Speaking of Errin, she was disturbingly tightlipped, even for her standards, and had fallen a couple yards behind them. The incline of the street caused her more trouble than she wanted to admit, and she swayed with each step. Nashtar had to have hit her worse than Lance had thought. She glared at him and Ivy with a vacant expression he failed to read, but deep behind her walls, he believed to see anger boiling. Anger and bitterness. Perhaps longing.

Before he had the chance to further contemplate Errin's state of mind, something jumped at him from behind, clung around his neck, and robbed his vision with small, delicate fingers.

"Guess who this is," his attacked demanded, and Ivy made a small squealing sound.

Even if her voice hadn't given her away, Lance would have never in the world mistaken the faint olive scent of sunflowers. His chest clenched as he aimed for a playful tone meant to hide the turmoil of gratitude and sorrow pinging through his body with every heartbeat.

"I'm absolutely clueless, I need a hint." If his voice trembled, she didn't seem to notice. "Oh wait, I have an idea. Could you maybe be… Aura?"

She released the grip around his neck to float in front of his face, and her amber-colored eyes brimmed with pure joy. "This time you got it right on your first try! Even though you can't even use heart reading to cheat," Aura chirped. "Where were you?"

How could he even begin to explain that?

* * *

"Where were you?" Aura asked, and the simple question made Ivy's eyes watery. She looked so innocent, so energetic, so _alive_. "You promised to show us around a bit, remember? But then you and Ivy disappear for no reason. Cynthia is furious to no end."

"And I believe I have every right to be." Ivy turned towards the familiar voice, even though she knew the sight would pain her.

Cynthia slipped through the crowds with the grace of a trained dancer. Her fine eyebrows were narrowed, and the care with which she carried herself didn't translate to her attempts at hiding her annoyance. Helbram floated behind her, and his bobbly flight earned him the attention of a number of passers-by; even in Liones, Fairies were far from a common sight. His eyes lit up as he saw them, and he raced forward to take a hold of Ivy's wrist.

"Ivyyyyy! I missed you."

Ivy's front crumbled, and under the storm of emotions, she surrendered. She dropped to her knees and laid her arms around Helbram's tiny form, disturbed by how fragile he felt under her touch. "I've missed you too."

"I can't say I'm surprised that you ran off with Lancelot," Cynthia said, "but mother and father won't be pleased to find out, I can assure you. You already strained their favor with how vehemently you tried to persuade them into letting you attend the funeral. Not only was this irritating, it was far below your status. And your age."

Ivy let go of Helbram to look at Cynthia while trying to make sense of what her sister had rambled about. She turned to Lance, but he was too swept up in his reunion with Aura to be of any help.

"Why wanted you to leave us for Arthur's funeral?" Helbram asked, which gave Ivy much-needed time to assess the situation. "Mommy and daddy already went away; don't you like us anymore?"

"Why _did_ you want to leave," Cynthia corrected strictly but not without warmth. "And despite his passing, we should still refer to him as _King_ Arthur. Regardless of whether Camelot will crown Sir Mordred or not."

A thought in the back of Ivy's mind sprung to life, awakened by something Cynthia had said. She remembered that her parents, alongside the other Sins, had travelled to Camelot after Arthur's death to attend his funeral, and had left Ivy and her siblings in Liones in the care of its Holy Knights. When Ivy had wished to accompany her parents, her stubbornness in the matter had resulted in a hefty argument with Diane. Ivy had lost to the decisiveness of her parents, but she had held onto her frustration over the matter for days.

"I wanted to go because," Ivy said, "I didn't want Mordred to think that he had been left alone. And I thought I could say something, do something that would make a difference. All these responsibilities were loaded onto him from one moment to the next. I felt so sorry for him back then…" So much had changed – now Ivy felt little more than hatred for Mordred.

"Back then? Have your escapades with Lancelot made you change your mind about his highness, Sir Mordred, so quickly? That's just like you, one day caught in daydreams and the next, you have forgotten about the whole affair. You and Lancelot certainly manage to bring out the worst of each other, and his unroyal behavior –"

"Oh, shut up, Cynthy, I've missed you too," Lance cut in before Cynthia could continue her monologue. Her eyes widened as Lance set Aura free to trap her in an embrace. With the ghost of a grin, he set his mouth close to her ear. "Plus, you've lost more than a few nights of sleep over dear crown prince Percival, isn't that right?"

Cynthia had the decency to blush as she pushed Lance away to resume her straight posture. "Lance, you're a nightmare to have as company!" Despite the harshness of her words, Cynthia dropped the bulk of her courtly façade and eyed her cousin with a little more fondness.

"Are you hurt, Ivy?" Helbram asked from Ivy's left and tugged at the piece of cloth once belonging to Gaius' coat that served as a makeshift bandage. Ivy winced but managed to pluck Helbram from the blood-soaked fabric before Cynthia would show an excess of curiosity.

She was occupied with brushing her lavender-colored dress into shape after Lance's assault on her personal space, and recreated a presentable image of hers in due time for Errin's wary arrival, heralded by the slow rattling of her armored boots. Cynthia's chin dropped straight to the floor, and, after regaining her manners, she followed after in a deep bow.

"Lady Errin, it is an honor. I wasn't aware that you were accompanying _them_," Cynthia said and rose elegantly; Ivy could not think of a more picture-perfect bob. Helbram – who had yet to make Errin's acquaintance – looked back and forth between his sister and the newcomer with round eyes.

"We aren't at court, Cynthia," Ivy reminded. Errin hopefully wouldn't dare to get used to this kind of well-mannered performance.

Errin waved the honorable gesture and speech away. "Please, no need for these kinds of formalities. It's nice to see you after such a long time, Cynthia. You have matured so much since then."

Cynthia blushed again, this time thanks to the compliment.

"Believe me, she was more tolerable when she was six," Ivy said and scooped up Helbram while taking up a standing position.

Cynthia's indignant expression was priceless, a reminded of their bickering from back before the world and Mordred had conspired to make Ivy's life a living nightmare. Ivy couldn't get enough of her sisters annoying overvaluation of manners, and she would have gladly traded everything in this world to have this moment continue without being reminded of the lives at stake. In a mere month's time, she wouldn't have the chance to listen to Cynthia's scolding, and what had once seemed infuriating felt like a precious gift.

But of course, Ivy knew she couldn't allow herself the luxury of dwelling.

"On a different note," Lance said, "you wouldn't have happened to come across Gaius or Katrina recently by any chance?"

Cynthia's eyes lit up at the mention of Katrina, but it was Aura who answered in her place. "No, we were too busy getting away from him to be on the lookout for anyone else. But last I've seen Katrina she was at the castle, I think."

"Away from whom?" Lance asked, but Ivy had a hunch as to who Aura referred to.

And sure enough, there he came jogging down the street, his hair a mess of dirty blond strands from his panicked pursue of the children dropped into his care. He almost bumped into the group before stumbling to a halt. His breath rattled while he held his kneecaps, and he barely managed to utter a comprehensive word.

"Never. Do that. To me. Again," Howzer pressed out. "I can't take these excessive games of tag. I'm… not _that _young anymore. Not young enough for these acrobatics, yeah."

An annoyed looking peasant tapped Howzer on the shoulder. "Are these your children?"

Howzer made round eyes that could have accounted for plate-sized. "Goodness, no."

"Well, they're blocking the road, so have that reunion elsewhere."

"Of course, good Sir," Howzer said with a fake smile that turned sour as soon as the other man reverted his attention to the boxes of raspberries his helpers balanced through the crowd. If Howzer hated one thing, it was people's refusal to recognize him as Grandmaster of the Holy Knights.

After shoving the whole group out of the overfilled traffic line of peddlers, merchants, farmers, and their colorful batch of customers, Howzer straightened to fill the width of the side alley in preparation for a lecture.

"Never run off like that ever again, or Diane won't leave enough of me intact to hold a funeral with," Howzer said with an overplayed booming voice. "Ivy, don't just vanish without a word, I get heart attacks from that. And Cynthia, Ivy's disappearance doesn't justify you running after her and taking Helbram and Aura with you. Have your parents never told you about what happens when little Fairies run off on their own? One of you might have been hurt."

Howzer looked like he wanted to add more, but Aura, who hovered in front of him with tears in her eyes, put a premature end to his scolding. "But uncle Howzer, we were really worried about Ivy and wanted to make sure she was okay all by herself. We never meant to do something bad or get you in trouble."

The magical words 'uncle Howzer' did the trick, and Howzer patted Aura's hair, mumbling something about 'such a sweet girl'. He would never catch on to the fact that Aura was an expert at manipulating her tears to appear whenever she desired.

"I hate doing this, but we need to get going," Lance hushed in Ivy's direction. Howzer jerked up and for the moment put his high regard for Aura aside.

"Sleeping on your training sessions again, huh?" he asked with a conspiring grin. "Well, if Percival were my training partner, I'd throw the towel too. He's just as much of a straight arrow as Gil was. But as Grandmaster, I happen to be obligated to send you back regardless. The reputation of Liones' Holy Knights is at stake, and in these times in particular, we can't allow ourselves to slack off."

"Uhm, I actually got a day off to… spend some time with Ivy and the others," Lance rambled.

His top executive was having none of it. "I know for a fact that you didn't. With Gil and half his guard in Camelot, I have a lot more time to check on the Holy Knights in training. Or I would have, if I wasn't busy chasing after the kids of my former crush… Pretend you didn't hear that last part!"

Ivy exchanged a worried look with Lance and Errin. The way the conversation was heading, Howzer wasn't going to let them roam free without unwanted oversight – not when Diane's wrath loomed over him like guillotine about to fall down. By now, Gaius must have reunited with Katrina, and they were waiting for the rest to catch up. But before then, Ivy, Lance, and Errin would have to lose both Howzer and Ivy's siblings. Under no circumstances would Ivy allow any of them to get dragged further into this mess.

"Grandmaster, I'd never want to slack off or anything like that, but Errin asked me and Ivy specifically to show her around the capital, and I couldn't deny her that, right?" This time around, Lance sounded far more composed, and his made-up excuse provoked the desired reaction.

Howzer's eyes widened as he realized who else he had lectured. "Errin?! I mean Miss Errin, I mean Lady Errin… I had no idea you were in Liones, a visitor like you doesn't come by too often. I mean you're one of Camelot's most revered Holy Knights, and I failed to arrange a proper greeting, and… why are you in Liones anyway?"

The question was justified. So shortly after King Arthur's death, Errin had no reason to stray around this far from home. Lance couldn't even appease Howzer's suspicion with an arbitrary political necessity because every political figure of relevance attended Arthur's funeral in Camelot. He had talked them into a dead end.

"How come you, Sir Howzer, aren't in Camelot alongside your king?" Errin deflected. Whether planned or not, the question played right into Howzer's disgruntlement.

"I wanted to! I knew Arthur just as well as Gil did, but he said _someone_ had to take care of Liones while he was gone, and he shamelessly abused that royal status of his. Just because he happened to marry the oldest princess, he thinks he can act all high and mighty, and tell me to act in accordance to my responsibilities. And then Diane takes advantage of me too, saying that she'd trust no one else to make sure her children are safe. But I created this hell myself because I still can't deny her anything she asks of me!"

Howzer had talked himself into self-pity with such mastery, he had forgotten about his unanswered question regarding Errin

"In that case, I think we best continue showing Errin around the capital," Lance said and nudged Aura forward, who seemed in no way content with being shoved back into the care of 'uncle Howzer'.

"Can't we go with you?" Helbram asked and crawled deeper into Ivy's arms as she attempted to hand him to either Cynthia or Howzer. Ivy adored his clinginess, but if she gave into his tiny hands wrapped around her neck any longer, she might never find the strength to let him go. She needed to concentrate on what lay ahead.

"No, it will be way too boring for you," she said. Helbram tilted his head, unconvinced, but let go of Ivy to float on his own.

Lance gave Aura another goodbye-hug. He struggled to ban the grief from his face, and Aura shifted as her subconscious took notice of the emotional quandary playing out in his heart. She studied his expression in search for answers but proceeded to tear herself from him to join Cynthia and Helbram without another word.

"Ivy, I want you back at the castle _latest_ by sundown, or I'll have Jennine set up a « Transmission Thread» straight to your parents," Howzer ordered. "I leave Lance in charge to make sure you don't forget."

Ivy didn't need to fake an offended expressed. Nor did Lance feign his triumphant grin. To think that Lance was assigned to watch over her _even though he was four months younger_ was absurd. This affront screamed heresy of the highest order. Lance didn't have the intellect to watch over his own feet, much less his _older_ cousin.

Ivy was still pondering over Howzer's ridicule of her pride when Errin ceased the opportunity and dragged her and Lance around the nearest corner, back into the anonymity of the crowd in search for Katrina and Gaius.

Too late did Ivy realize that she had failed to bid her siblings farewell.

* * *

**(A/N) **Not my best work I must say, but after all the twists, I thought a calmer chapter could work well. And I finally found time to flesh out Ivy's siblings a little more. While I do have detailed characterizations for them, especially Cynthia, incorporating my ideas into the story never seemed to fit. I hope you enjoyed the chapter despite that lack of story development. We're getting there, I promise.

Thank you so much for reading, as usual.


	19. Kindness

– A few months before The Fall –

Mordred awaited her when she arrived at the capital's northern gates, escorted by two Holy Knights. A smile enlightened his features and made him look younger than his thoughtful eyes suggested.

"Ivy! It's so good to see you. It's been forever, hasn't it?" he said while dismounting his horse to greet her. Every movement of his adhered to a playful elegance.

Ivy shuffled her feet in preparation of the bow required among humans when facing a person of royal status – that she had practiced with painstaking vehemence about a million times –, and recited the words she had phrased and rephrased since departing from the Fairy King's Forest. "On behalf of the Fairy King, I congratulate you on the foundation of the Knights of the Round Table. He apologizes for being unable to follow your invitation himself."

A shadow crossed Mordred's face during her last words, peppered with a tension that might have been anger. Disappointment maybe? But he recovered his smile as quickly as it had disappeared.

"No need to be so formal," he said, his tone bar of the supposed anger.

Ivy sighed and released the tension from her shoulders. Mordred's grin widened. "Thank the heavens that's over and done with. I'm never gonna get used to all the ins and outs of court. I don't envy you at all for having to put up with this day in and day out."

Ivy followed Mordred through the wide-open gates and into the capital itself, where the street bustled with life and the scents of a hundred different goods on display. A man sold sugary cakes and candied fruits to noblemen with a coin to spare, roasted pigs and pheasants turned on spits, and wooden objects from tiny pendants to massive wardrobes created a tapestry that almost smelled like home. Where it not for the ghastly stank of horses attached to every stone and person. Mordred mercifully spared Ivy the journey towards the castle on a horse of her own, unlike his escort who followed with the three mounts at a respectful distance. He seemed quite comfortable with passing the streets on foot and observed clusters of chatty peasants, merchants following the call of daily business and children crossing the avenue in their wake, absorbed in a game of tag. A few of the passers-by acknowledged Mordred with a respectful bow, but most of them failed to recognize their crown prince amongst them.

"So, how is your father doing?" Mordred asked after repaying another display of respect with a friendly nod.

Ivy avoided his gaze by pretending to be captivated by a puppeteer performing a play of human folklore called The Fisher King, much to the delight of the crowd of children in front of him.

"It's the same as ever," she finally said, "the human villagers close to the Fairy King's Forest do their best to get a hold on the outer trees' wood. Probably to sell it on a market just like this. Dad is trying to negotiate with them. Thing is, they won't budge. Apparently, some bright mind claimed that wood from the Fairy King's Forest is infused with magical energy, and now everyone wants a piece of it. Are all humans this awful?"

"They're certainly short-sighted," Mordred allowed. "But with time and the right hand to guide them, I'm sure they can better themselves."

"One day you'll be that guiding hand for Camelot. Must be quite the responsibility."

Instead of addressing her point, Mordred looked at her puzzled. "You should know, considering you're the first heir to your father and will therefore rule over the Fairy Clan one day."

"Line of succession doesn't work that way with the Fairy Clan. Every Fairy King is chosen by the Sacred Tree and not by some arbitrary concept like blood relation. Only the one who deserves to be king will be granted the title to make sure the Fairy Clan will live in harmony. Plus, I hardly even count as half-Fairy. Not that I wanted that title anyway."

Mordred considered her words for a while, so Ivy used the silence to admire the architectural design of the great avenue which led all the way to the royal palace; a wide cobblestone road rising towards the central hill aligned with houses of similar style but with enough difference in color and design to avoid monotony. Detailed masonry decorated the fronts with Goddesses, Demons, and scenic landscapes. Usually, Cynthia was the one to be enthralled by anything human-made, but Ivy had to admit that the houses looked mesmerizing when all she was used to was the forest with its complete lack of buildings and planned layouts.

"I suppose this amount of responsibility doesn't suit everyone," Mordred said, and the sudden resumption of the topic caught Ivy off guard and almost made her stumble over a bump in the street. "But without someone willing to take matters into their hands, everything will decay sooner rather than later."

Faint bitterness had invaded his tone. Ivy shifted away from him and wondered if she had said something wrong.

"I'm sure you'll be up to the challenge," she said.

Mordred stared into the middle distance without seeming to have heard her.

:.:.:

Ivy leaned against the wooden fencing around the Holy Knight's training ground and tapped her foot to the sound of boredom. Mordred's new set of elitist swordsmen with the colorful name 'Knights of the Round Table' made for an intriguing bunch to watch, but the ongoing duel was so one-sided it lacked any resemblance of tension. Nashtar could have ended the fight minutes ago, if he hadn't found such enjoyment in playing with his opponent, a younger knight with brown locks and a blatant lack of ingenuity to his technique.

Nashtar circled his adversary with a superior grin before charging with a blunt uppercut that gave the younger knight an opening to strike at Nashtar's exposed left side. But the daring thrust proved ineffective against Nashtar's magical ability, and Nashtar fell his opponent with a quick but uninspired barrage of hits.

"Excellent work, Nashtar," Mordred praised his second-in-command and received a respectful dip of Nashtar's sword. "Orland, try putting more focus on your footwork next time. If you evade his hits long enough, you will tire him out. Use his strength against him instead of trying to block every hit."

As the next pair of fighters entered the ring to replace Nashtar and Orland, Mordred turned to Ivy with a smile and pointed at her Shrinking Bracelet which she spun around her wrists in endless loops. "Bored out of your mind already?"

Ivy straightened and brushed her dress back into shape. She preferred other types of clothing due to the restrictions a dress put on her movement, but since she paid an official visit to represent her father, she had thought Mordred might appreciate the gesture.

"Sorry about that. Guess I make for a pretty lousy guest," she said.

"Don't worry," Mordred reassured and directed part of his attention to the duel opened with a first, loud clash of swords. "A few months ago, I wouldn't have paid mind to those military practices either. In fact, I used to despise training so much I almost quit on it. Things have changed though…"

Ivy couldn't think of all that many things Mordred could refer to when talking about change. With the exception of Lance, who had moved to Liones to start training as a Holy Knight, nothing back home had changed. Even the passing of the seasons left the leaves of the Fairy King's Forest in the ever same lush green. They certainly didn't care about Lance's departure. His decision was devoid of logic. It seemed as though some kind of fast-spreading infection made everyone interested in a future as a warmongering swordsman.

But Ivy felt no desire to share her thoughts on the matter. "Before you'll know it, you'll be manning up, Mordred," she said, before continuing in a more serious tone. "But really, you've created something on your own with the Knights of the Round Table, something to be proud of. That's more than what I've given you credit for."

Mordred's eyes widened before the warmth of gratitude charmed his features, and the sounds of clashing metal, gruff breaths from the two combatants, and the occasional roars from the bystanders replaced their conversation. The duel ended when the smaller, more agile knight swept his opponent's legs from under him.

"Sweet victory," the triumphant knight – Mordred had introduced him as Mark – said and collected the cheers from the crowd with the winning smile of an entertainer. "I hope I'll get to roll against Errin next time, these competitions are sorely lacking in a decent challenge. Still got a score with her to settle."

Ivy straightened and looked over the rows of Holy Knights. But the face she was looking for, wasn't among them. "Speaking of, where_is_Errin? I'm surprised she isn't running circles around you in an attempt to get your attention."

Mordred made a face as if he had crossed path with something extremely unpleasant. "Errin… declined my offer to be part of the Knights of the Round Table. She is running patrols around Camelot's borders and should be away for a while. She asked for the mission herself. If she wants to turn her back on me, then fine, so be it. I'm not going to stop her. And if the future of Camelot is little more than a worthless chore on her mind, she is free to go and do what she pleases. I'll be happy to never hear of her again!"

Anger had propelled his voice into a rant just shy of screaming. The dark sea of his iris had frozen, a bitter-cold glacier under a tormented sky where Errin had no place. But then, as if a switch had been turned in his emotional center, Mordred turned to Ivy with another genuine smile.

"Anyway, I'm glad you're here, Ivy," he said. "It means a lot to me. More than I can put into words and more than what I've given you credit for."

Appalled by the sudden shift in tone, Ivy was unable to think of a response and avoided his gaze and the hand resting on the fence, so close to her own.

* * *

One month until The Fall of Liones.

In one month, Mordred would repeat history and destroy the most powerful individuals in Britannia, or his reign would end before it had begun. In one month, fate would be decided and the victor would mourn the loss of the dead.

Before then, Errin would have to cook up a plan that prevented Mordred's death at the hands of one of her fellow travelers. With the lackluster effects the demise of the Colossai had had on The Fall, they had to be more willing than ever to deal with the core of the problem and dispose of the threat for good. Ivy in particular.

Errin puffed out a shaky breath. How could she condemn Ivy's reasoning as overly emotional? Ivy _needed_ to save her younger siblings. They were the primary reason for her to keep going.

Gaius would approach the dilemma matter-of-factly and deem Mordred's death as the simplest and most efficient way to prevent the death of the Sins. And Lance… Lance had looked at Aura with a love that could not be betrayed. Ivy, Aura, they all were his family. With a stich more painful than she admitted to herself, Errin wrote off his support.

She needed time to approach Mordred alone. In Camelot, half a world away, he was grieving the death of his father while she staggered through the crowded streets of Liones. Maybe the darkness had yet to claw its fangs into his heart, waited in the shadows around him. If Errin could be with him, if she had been alongside him to help him through this one sorrowful month tempting him with the promises of a simpler tomorrow back when she had had the chance to, all this could have been avoided. But Errin had delved into her duties as a Holy Knight and had left Camelot for the longest possible patrol missions to get as far away from the city's shadows. The one time Mordred had depended on her rather than the other way around, and she had failed him.

Ivy and Lance might have failed to protect their families, but Errin had her own wrongs to right. As soon as they found the others, she would ask Gaius to teleport her to Camelot. If need be, she would go there by foot.

Unfortunately, her determination was stronger than her battered lungs, and Errin wheezed heavily soon after she dragged Lance and Ivy away from the latter's siblings. She craved for oxygen, and each step required tremendous amount of willpower to take. White spots took shape in her peripheral vision. Lance shot her a worried glance, but she chose to ignore him. Katrina would hopefully heal her wounds before her body shut down.

"Errin? Errin, are you okay?" The alarmed voice belonged to Lance, but Errin struggled to identify his face against the ghostly features of the surrounding crowd. All of them blurred together.

He snapped his fingers in front of her face, but the motion did nothing to chase away the white spots sprouting like mushrooms. "Don't pass out on me now! Crap, I think she's losing consciousness." Shuffling sounds, more white spots. "Ivy, keep her stabilized while I go look for Katrina."

"I can search for her, and you stay with Errin."

"You're injured, and you probably have a concussion, so you don't know what you're talking about. Remember, Howzer left me in charge." A growl, hurried footsteps.

Errin's limited view tilted, but a strong arm prevented her from toppling over. "I got you. Just do me a favor and stay with me until I get you out of the bulk of townsfolk." The arm held like a railing in front of Errin kept her somewhat in place and allowed her to take a handful of slow steps into the direction towards which she was pushed from behind.

Waves of heat and cold rocked her body, and her vision quit on her. The murmurs of the crowd rung in her ears. When she was convinced to throw up the next second, she was pushed down to sit on something wooden. Ivy – at least Errin imagined it had to be Ivy – directed Errin's head backwards to provide her brain with more oxygen, and the blue of the sky filtered through her fluttering eyelids.

"Stay put and try to focus on breathing," Ivy said. Too exhausted to argue, Errin did as instructed, pulled in air, and released her breath just as slowly. The spinning of her head faltered a little.

"I guess Nashtar hit you harder than you wanted to admit. And here I thought Lance was the stubborn one." Ivy's voice sounded distant, but not distant enough to block her words out. "If you hadn't stood up for us, I guess we wouldn't have lasted long enough to be pulled out by Gaius. It was pretty close already, wasn't it?" Ivy sighed. "I always wondered why you avoided me so much. You always pushed everyone away who tried to approach you, like you didn't want to get close to anyone. Like you didn't care. And all I wanted was someone who'd go ahead and approach me with an open mindset."

Ivy's voice had become small. "Mordred was like that, you know? He didn't see me as someone different, he just saw me as… me. Who I was as a person. Not like an abnormal freak. I know why you want to believe that this side of him is still there. But you didn't see this cold detachment in his eyes when he executed my siblings. My mom. My dad…" She trailed off. Maybe she believed Errin had fallen too deep into delirium and had long stopped listening.

"You want to save your siblings and parents," Errin said in spite of her sluggish tongue. "I want to save Mordred. It's the same thing."

Ivy scoffed. "I'm having a hard time believing that. I'm gonna be honest with you, Errin: If I get the chance to kill Mordred, I will. Without thinking twice."

"And you know that I'll stop you when you try."

Errin and Ivy refrained from exchanging another word and passed the time in silence. The rift separating them was too deep and too wide to be bridged by a single conversation, and neither would step back from the vows they had made towards those they needed to protect. Though Errin had to admit that the seed of doubt had long sprouted in her mind. When she had seen Mordred enter the courtyard with the gaze of a man she didn't know while she was planted on the ground, a part of her – the part she wanted, needed to silence – had begun to fear him and who he had become.

The sound of multiple pairs of feet crashing down on the cobblestone jolted Errin out of her thoughts and motivated her to open her eyes despite the fear of vertigo hijacking her senses.

All worries and sense of self-preservation were pushed into the background as she recognized Katrina hurrying down the street, flanked by Lance and Gaius. She was unhurt, and her face missed the signs of debilitation that followed her endeavors with the Time Crystal. In fact, Katrina looked oddly composed and confident as she scurried forward.

Ivy abandoned her seat on the bench beside Errin to rush towards the trio. "Katrina, is everything okay? Are you hurt?"

"I'm fine, you and Errin are the ones who got hurt. Gaius already filled me in on the details." Ivy raised a brow and exchanged a look of with Lance. But he had no idea from where Katrina took her newfound strength either.

Katrina used the stunned silence to position herself in front of Errin, both palms outstretched, her brows furrowed. "Please hold still," she said in the same tone that allowed no debate she had addressed Ivy with.

Light spread from Katrina's fingertips into a glowing sphere, and as soon as the magic touched Errin's chest, she was treated to a feeling of warmth and wholeness. She drew in a sharp breath as the broken bones of her ribcage reassembled themselves and was surprised by the ease with which she could fill her lungs with air. Not a semblance of phantom pain remained to remind of the dire injury that had caused her such trouble a mere moment ago. She shifted her arms and torso to test the limits of her healed body, and found them to work as good as new.

When Katrina was convinced of the success of her work, she moved on to treat Ivy with the same healing spell. Errin had no idea how costly the usage of this kind of magic was – she imagined the price tag to be beyond considerable –, but Katrina didn't so much as pale after performing the spell twice. Instead, she flashed Gaius an open smile that he _reciprocated_. He looked like a normal kid with emotions rather than book knowledge in his veins. That was a first.

"When did you get so phenomenal with Goddess magic?" Lance asked.

Katrina averted her gaze on account of the compliment and fell back into her shy persona. "I'm not exactly sure, but I think it happened when I managed to regain control over my Demon magic; the two sides must be linked in some way. It's all thanks to Zeldris."

"_The _Zeldris?! As in Ten Commandment slash Demon King Zeldris?!"

"Without his help, I would have been trapped in the Demon Realm by now. I owe him so much" Katrina said. "I just wish I had the chance to get to know him better…"

Errin couldn't claim to have any desire to cross paths with the Demon King – and based on the appalled looks Lance and Ivy threw Katrina, they shared her resentment. Zeldris' name was not held in fond memories in Camelot after he destroyed the capital and played a key-role in the temporary death of Arthur twenty-five years ago. To say Errin disdained him would be an understatement. Katrina was a gentle soul, but her attachment towards a man associated with death and destruction in his early days disregarded all reason.

But then again, who was Errin to judge?

* * *

Despite the bright sky outside, the tavern they had sought refuge in was wrapped in a dim light best fit for a merchant's shady business. And if the hushed voices from the pair two tables across accounted for anything, the establishment had gained a reputation to provide exactly that kind of privacy. The ideal place for a group of teens to conspire against the future king of Camelot.

"Anyone any bright ideas?" Lance addressed the round, but as a response he merely received averted gazes and the sound of feet being shuffled under the table. As to be expected. "Okay, then let me give you some of the most obvious options we have at our disposal and see where we can go from there."

Since no one wanted to throw in their discontent, Lance continued. "First off: We involve adults, either the Sins or the Holy Knights stationed in Liones. I know we wanted to avoid that and we'd have a lot of convincing to do, but in the worst-case scenario I'm willing to get back to this option." At this point, Lance would gladly endure a week's worth of scolding from his parents to no longer feel like he was treading on the same spot. "Second: We walk to Camelot and straight to Mordred and take care of him while he doesn't have an army to support him. If we do it right, we can avoid further encounters with the Round Table."

Lance avoided the specifics on how they would 'take care' of Mordred on purpose, but Errin's expression darkened to match the gloomy wall behind her all the same. He wasn't the biggest fan of plan number two either, but their options had been running short ever since they had set foot outside the Boar Hat. And if he knew Ivy one bit, Lance could count on her willingness to pursue this course of action.

"Third," he continued, "we find out what dark magic allowed Mordred to overcome the defenses of Liones this time around and focus our efforts on dealing with that force as supposed to Mordred himself."

All in all, Lance preferred this method over the other ones, but he had to admit it was the one with the lowest probability of success. Eradicating the Colossai before Mordred had the chance to use them had done nothing to prevent the death of the Sins. How high was the chance that they would run into the same problem again? Plus, Lance had no idea where to begin searching for information. What little he had observed during the newest variation of The Fall had revealed nothing out of the ordinary. No Colossai, no Demon army, and no revived Tyrant Dragon to match Camelot's crest. Mordred and the Knights of the Round Table had mowed down Liones' defenses with the same ease a Black Hound overwhelmed a family of unsuspecting rabbits.

"So, thoughts?"

"When looking at the other side's capabilities as well as our own with the needed objectivity, we would be best served to proceed with option number two," Gaius said and let the quill he used to take notes on every piece of knowledge worth remembering perform artistic maneuvers between his fingers. "From our past discoveries, we can deduct that Mordred is the core where the strings run together, meaning that he is the one who the execution of The Fall depends on. Once he falls out of the equation, The Fall will no longer happen."

"But there are other ways, right? Ways that don't involve murder…" Katrina said. Disheartened, she slumped in her chair and disappeared behind her bowl of steaming soup. She hadn't touched the food once, and Ivy had spent the better part of the conversation eyeing the bowl's unidentifiable, mashed-together contents.

Lance was sure the tavern owner had rooked them; in no world did Errin's silver coins equal two portions of the place's cheapest soup. But since he couldn't convert Camelot's currency into Liones' thaler without fail, he had let the scam slide. The other place they had tried their luck with had showed even more apprehension towards anything linked to Camelot. The premature death of the country's king didn't exactly boat well for the trust others had in its economy or currency.

"Probably, but I have no idea how we could take him into custody," Lance answered Katrina's question once he tore himself from the soup dilemma. "For now, he still is the heir to the Camelotian throne, and he hasn't committed any crimes yet. It's difficult to arrest someone for treason against the crown when they _are_ the crown."

"Can we get back to option three then?" Errin asked and set her spoon aside; the soup didn't seem to taste to her liking. Not that Lance was surprised.

Ivy freed her gaze from Errin's abandoned broth of chicken and chanterelle – if one chose to believe the menu on the matter – and returned her focus to the discussion at hand. "If you got any information that could help, I'm all ears. Because to me, it looked like Mordred only needed his loyal division of idiots."

"I must admit that I was on unable to collect any helpful evidence as well," Gaius said. "I considered the possibility of a widespread working of «Enslavement of the Dead» that would have enlarged Mordred's forces, but there is little support behind the theory."

"Now _that_ would have just been creepy." Creepy enough that Gaius had thought about this forsaken Druid technique used to resurrect corpses. Gross.

"Does Mordred have any ties to the Druid Clan? Has he ever visited Istar?" Gaius asked and looked up from his book long enough to signal to Errin that the question was meant for her.

She shook her head. "Not as far as I know. But I didn't stay with him long after the funeral, so I don't know what he was up to after that."

"So we're at another dead end," Lance said with a sigh. "Katrina, do me a favor and eat your soup while it's warm. You already look like you'll catch a cold, so don't push your luck on this."

How anyone could catch a cold in the middle of summer was beyond Lance, but wherever Katrina had gone during her solo adventure, it couldn't have been all that cozy. When Lance had run into her and Gaius, remnants of melting snowflakes had stuck in her hair, not to mention the water-soaked state of her dress and shoes. And if Katrina had no interest in the only meal she would get in who-knew-how-long, she could at least hand the bowl to Ivy to brighten her spirits.

"Could Mordred have used a spell that strengthened his men?" Katrina asked after she gulped down one spoonful of soup and then pushed the bowl towards Ivy.

"Certainly, the possibilities are nearly endless," Gaius answered. He declined Ivy's silent offer of a share of the soup with a handwave. "Without any leads to work with, however, it will be difficult to narrow down the variables to something comprehensible."

"It seems you've all already decided on option number two." Errin shifted in her chair, eager to get up and leave.

The problem was that Lance had nothing to say that could appease her. He didn't want Mordred to die, but he was willing to make the sacrifice, with his own hands if necessary. Better he did it than any of the others. Even Ivy, no matter how often she denied the truth, would forever be haunted if she was forced to pay the price for her family's lives in blood.

"Errin, I won't ask you to continue fighting if you don't want to," Lance said. "To be honest, all of this is laughably far over our heads. We don't have a real plan or particular combat experience to show for. From the very beginning, we had nothing but a goal in mind, and, somehow, that brought us this far. We stumble more than we walk. Our goals don't align, I get that. If I knew a way to change this, you can bet that I would go there. But I'm asking for your help regardless of our disagreements and our differences. Because we need you, Errin, we need you if we want to have any chance at winning this. You've seen Helbram and Cynthia and Aura back there – they will die if we don't win this."

Errin bit her lips. Her gaze met Lance's, and the conflict behind her eyes showed through. A war between her loyalty to Mordred and her bond with these younger misfits who she had travelled with for the past weeks. Lance had meant what he had said about needing her; he owed Aura to go to any lengths in order to protect her, but his abilities had neared their limits.

He didn't spoke the word 'please' out loud, but he knew it was written in his face.

"I'll go with you," Errin said, but avoided their gazes as she spoke. "For as long as it serves me. Which means I need confirmation that all of you will try to save Mordred just as much as the others. If you can't agree to this term, I'll stand against you without hesitation."

Katrina almost jumped out of her chair, and her beam pushed back the dimness of the room. "We'll do our best to prevent Mordred from going down this path, I promise."

Gaius and Ivy seemed far less enthusiastic about the conditions of their treaty, but they nodded in agreement. Lance's muscles relaxed as a ton worth of worries was lifted from his chest. For the moment, the problem with Errin was solved, and he wouldn't have to keep his eyes open for the moment she would leave the group to go about her business unsupervised.

Errin hadn't given up Mordred yet. Maybe she never would. But she had taken a crucial step to untie the bonds chaining her to this man's darkness that held the power to pull her down with him.

:.:.:

The last sunrays glistened behind the chimneys and merlons of Liones, and with the light, the people disappeared from the street. And while Lance watched the last citizens scurry home past the abandoned royal safehouse, he wondered why he was surprised that Ivy refused to abandon her distrust towards all matters concerning Errin and Mordred.

"Do you really think she'll play along while we wage war against the single individual that matters more to her than anyone else?" she asked and searched for the truth in Lance's expression. He never dared to hope she wouldn't find the answer; he was as easy to read as a capital-lettered banner made for Giants.

"I guess it's more that I hope she does," Lance answered and offered Ivy the free space on the wide sill hugging the bottom frame of the window. "You and I are at best decent when it comes to fighting, especially if we can't make use of our magical abilities. No doubt that Gaius could chant something out of his pockets, but for all his knowledge, he lacks a healthy dose of initiative. And the farther we can keep Katrina away from any fighting the better."

Ivy sat down opposite from him and hugged her knees. "I don't know, she seemed pretty steeled after going solo with the Time Crystal. But I get what you mean, she couldn't kill someone even if her life depended on it."

"Could you?" The question was cruel, and as soon as the words escaped his lips, Lance no longer wanted to know the answer.

"I don't know," Ivy said. "I thought that now that I've seen people die I could, but I've only fought against Holy Knights I met once or twice at most. Mordred will be different – and I'm not sure if this makes it harder or easier. I don't know if I can watch someone's eyes go dull without feeling anything. I don't know if I can handle the face of a dead man following me wherever I go. Even if it will be a monster like Mordred. How do you live with it?"

"I try not to think about it."

Ivy nodded and let her eyes travel to the street on the other side of the milky glass. Lance had suggested to use the safehouse as a place to rest before the tedious journey to Camelot tomorrow, and with the exhaustion the group faced, no one had voiced complaints. Katrina had dropped into her assigned bed on the upper floor, asleep before she could bother with the covers.

Lost in thought, Ivy traced spirals and vines across the glass. "What if we could change Mordred? What if he can't see the errors of his ways and only needs a guiding hand to make him see that he can be better than the monster I see in him?"

"I would love to believe that. It would make the world so much easier. But if I hold onto my illusions, I won't have the strength when push comes to shove. You of all people have seen what he is capable of."

"I know, I know. But I keep thinking about what you said at the destroyed tower in Camlann. That I have to make the first step if I wish the Giants to change their ways."

Lance leaned forward and caught Ivy's restless hand to make her look at him. "Ivy, Mordred isn't like the Giant Clan. He isn't like the Colossai. No higher might he had no control over pushed him into this or that direction. And he definitely isn't your responsibility. If you want to change the Giant Clan for the better, I'm with you all the way. But I don't want you to bury yourself in a rescue mission that you don't believe in. Not because of anything Errin said, and definitely not because of something I said. Okay?"

Ivy had stared at Lance with the wide eyes of a cornered deer, but after he ended, a hesitant smile at last broke the stiffness. "Okay."

Lance released a breath. "What do you want to do now?"

"I'm gonna go to the palace to prevent Howzer from getting a heart attack, but I'll sneak back out again as soon as I can. Maybe I can manage a detour into the palace kitchen," Ivy said and jumped to her feet. The last rays of sun painted her hair an intense shade of red. "What do you say, care to join? They probably missed you more than me."

He was tempted. A few hours with his cousins without his thoughts dragged down by what was to come sounded like heaven on earth. He could hear Aura laugh. But once Lance gave in to the illusion of normalcy, nothing would convince him to leave.

"Say hi to them for me. I'll be here when you get back."

Based on her small smile, Ivy had seen through his thought process. "I'll make sure to tell Howzer you send me."

Then she was out the door and left Lance alone with the wandering thoughts that returned once the weak grin had faded from his lips.

* * *

The next morning arrived far too early for Katrina's liking.

As much as her encounter with her uncle had helped her sort her thoughts and regain some semblance of control, her resources of magic power had limits, and jumping through time three times in less than a day was a costly chore. She regretted rejecting the tasteless soup from yesterday. The meal would have provided counter to the emptiness in her stomach.

The constant rumoring banished the urge to indulge in the warmth of her bed, and Katrina toddled down the wide staircase to the street-level floor. The green-patterned wallpaper and the plaster below peeled from the wall, and most steps creaked when she placed a foot on them. Apart from Katrina and those few she had dragged along in the past, no one bothered to come to the safehouse, and maintenance was long overdue.

A pleasant warmth filled Katrina's chest. Long ago, she and Cynthia had hidden here and skimmed through a richly illustrated volume her best friend had purloined from the palace library. Cynthia had oohed and aahed at every drawing of a human castle, palace, or tower, daydreaming about a life in one of these esteemed places. As sisters of mind, they had promised to keep each other's secrets, and Katrina had enjoyed these few shared hours more than the days spent with other children her age.

Her mind circled to Tristan all on its own. Would he have hidden in the safehouse with her instead of Cynthia? Would Katrina have entrusted him with her secrets and insecurities? How strange to reminisce about a brother she had never met, who had died before he could develop complex emotions, quirks, and character traits.

Katrina stopped, and her foot hovered over the bottom step, surprised to find the single day room occupied. Gaius, Ivy, and Lance bent over the single, dust-covered table to inspect an object she failed to get a solid view on. Errin, meanwhile, had put on a stoic mask and watched the commotion unfold from her space in the corner between a stack of empty wooden boxes and the poor remains of a fireplace.

She noticed Katrina's arrival first. "How do you feel? Do you think you got enough sleep for the upcoming journey?" she asked, and a sliver of warmth broke through her indifferent expression.

"I think so. I didn't know all of you were already awake…"

"We wanted to let you sleep in longer to make sure you get to cure your Time Crystal exhaustion," Lance explained before gesturing at the table. "Gaius came up with an idea that might help us with the next steps."

Her curiosity spiked, and Katrina closed in on the table for a better look at what Lance and Gaius kept pointing at. The object of interest revealed itself as Gaius' beloved notebook, opened at a double page showing a hand-drawn map of Britannia, complete with kingdoms, mountain ranges, and other landmarks. The fine ink lines were placed with a precision to match the works of the most revered map artists. Katrina couldn't help but wonder how many evenings Gaius had worked on the drawing, hunched over a mountain of maps in the light of a flickering candle.

"I reconsidered everything I knew about Mordred, and came across a detail that I thought had the potential to be of importance," Gaius began in his familiar lecture tone. "Even before the death of the King of Camelot, Mordred had displayed a certain interest in magic arts and had sought knowledge from Merlin and a variety of written sources. Errin confirmed as much. We also know that he left the capital on multiple occasions in the month between the king's funeral and The Fall of Liones, which leaves me to assume that he came across information about the Colossai on one of these expeditions. It must be noted that sources on anything related to the Colossai are sparse, and even Merlin's studies only mention them in passing if at all. There are, however, places in which older knowledge has persisted."

"Like Istar?" Katrina suggested.

"Or the underground library of Benwick," Lance threw in and pointed at a marker south of Edinburgh that had since been swallowed by the great expansion of Camelot.

Gaius nodded. "I cogitated about both options, but there is one location that fits Mordred's needs better and is easier to reach." With these words, Gaius let his index finger hover next to an emblem for a town in the far south where Britannia's landmass narrowed to a westward pointing spit.

The text below the emblem read 'Ruins of Belialuin'.

"My memory might be playing tricks on me, but wasn't Belialuin destroyed down to its foundation walls?" Ivy asked and eyed Gaius like one would a becoming madman.

"That is largely correct, the city was razed to the ground by the combined forces of the Demon King and the Supreme Deity three millennia ago, and with the destruction of the city, most of its scriptures were sadly lost," Gaius said. "One of Merlin's writings, however, suggests the survival of a handful of texts in a disclosed facility somewhere in the city's ruins. My theory is that Mordred found this facility and read about the Colossai and the location of their seal there. Otherwise, I don't see how he could have obtained the necessary information to plan and carry out his attack on Liones."

"I never heard Mordred mention Belialuin, but he did have a weakness for ancient and spectacular stories," Errin said, and a veil of nostalgia crossed her face.

"If we can get to Belialuin before Mordred gets there, we can prevent him from finding the material he used to conquer Liones!" Katrina said. She had sworn to help Errin no matter the cost, and Gaius' theory might hold the missing piece to turn their wish into reality.

But Ivy was quick to pour the salt of negativity all over Katrina's excitement. "Assuming he used information from there other than where to find the Colossai. We don't even know what it is we're looking for or if the rumor about some secret dungeon of knowledge is true at all."

"Hate to break it to you, Gaius, but Ivy has a point here," Lance said, but his apologetic look targeted Errin more so than Gaius. "We only have one month until The Fall, and focusing our efforts at Mordred just seems like the safer bet to me. I would prefer to avoid using the Time Crystal to undo detours that cost us nothing but time."

Katrina raised her chin. "I can handle the Time Crystal just fine. You don't have to worry about me for a change."

"Hey, I have all the faith in you one could ask for," Lance reassured, "but we've been relying on that thing too much lately. Remember what Gowther said about avoiding to use it? 'Cause I do, and I don't like the sound of it one bit."

"If you keep insisting that we don't have enough time to pursue both options, then why don't we split up?"

All heads turned towards Errin's corner of the room, everyone with a different reaction plastered onto their face. Ivy's features bore mild surprise, Lance looked fed up with this world, and Gaius' eyes had lit up with a glimmer of hope.

They would maximize their winning chances, wouldn't they? Not only could they make sure that The Fall wouldn't come to pass, but they might just manage to save Mordred along the way. "I think it's a great idea," Katrina said and earned herself an appreciative nod from Errin.

"No, it's not, and you should all know better," Lance cut in. "Every time we split up, bad things happen. What do you think why the Sins lost in the first place? We all know how capable they are and how limitless their magic resources seem. Mordred could have never beaten them if they had stood against him as a group. No, Mordred won because they split up without a solid strategy."

"You said you would save Mordred the same way you would save the Sins," Errin reminded.

"I know what I said. But we'll cut into our own foot if we split our efforts."

"Where's the harm in letting Gaius and Katrina go to Belialuin where they won't have to face Holy Knights or Mordred?"

"Gaius can't protect Katrina!"

Katrina had never seen Lance lose his calm, and she wished this to be the first and only time. When they reached a dead end, he was the one to remind the group to approach matters with a collected mindset and inspect all options with equal care. This wasn't him, but a version that was beyond conflicted about giving matters into someone else's hands. Lance was afraid. Afraid to lose another person he cared about, afraid to risk a repetition of The Fall, all visible in his defensive stance and his widened pupils that spoke of the horror he had seen and that he could not allow to strike again.

And while Katrina could emphasize with him, the had no right to judge Gaius' capabilities – or hers. "I don't need an escort to be safe anymore," Katrina said, hoping to sound a tad more convincing than she felt. Her powers didn't scare her like they used to, but she had yet to master them. But if Lance needed reassurance, she would offer him reassurance, regardless of the inner turmoil that had never set her free.

Ivy put a hand on Lance's arm, and more than any word, the silent gesture drove back the fear from his eyes.

"Sorry, Gaius, didn't mean to call your skills into question like that," Lance said. "I snapped just because I'm tired and worried and emotionally drained, and I'm sorry for letting it out on you."

"Does this mean you'll allow Gaius and me to go to Belialuin?" Katrina asked.

Lance gave her a pained smile. "I can't really stop you if this is what you want. Just… be careful."

When Katrina shot Gaius a glance, his face shone. Belialuin had to represent a sacred site to someone so enamored with knowledge and magic, and the opportunity to see this place of legend with his own eyes had to be the best news he had received in a long time. His excitement was… childlike. Katrina had never seen Gaius this mirthful, not even when he had inspected a magic object of mysterious origin in previous days.

"Errin, you'll be with us in Camelot then?" Ivy asked, but from the sound of it, she knew the answer.

"To prevent you two from doing something regrettable if nothing else."

They had details and specifics to discuss, but Katrina linked herself out of the conversation, convinced the rest had no further need for her input. Her thoughts began to wander outside the confinements of the room, and the anxiousness and ecstasy of travelling to the borders of Britannia to the former capital of wizards and magicians filled her like a meal of fantastic taste that was too much for her to swallow. She had never wished to part from Ivy, Lance, and Errin, and what she had seen done to them by Nashtar haunted her thoughts as the second most horrid experience of her life. But at the same time, she looked forward to the journey to Belialuin and the challenges that awaited them in the ruins of a civilization revered for their knowledge about magic. If Katrina concentrated, she heard the faint whispers of these wizards, promises of answers, and the hope to grow beyond the scared girl in need of saving.

Katrina blinked as she realized the sounds of conversation had died down. At first, she thought they were waiting for a response from her – if someone happened to have posed her a question, she was sure she would have failed to notice –, but the attention of the group lay on the door or rather what remained hidden beyond the weathered wood.

Another hesitant knock against the door. Ivy made a step forward, her expression lost between concentrated and shaken, disturbed even. Errin reached for her sword, and in the same instance, the door was pushed upon to allow entrance to a figure hustling inside and shutting out the noise from the street. They pushed back the hood of their short summer cloak to reveal locks of dark chestnut, woven into a complex updo. But even without a clear view of the intruder's face, Katrina would have recognized them by their presence alone.

"I knew I would find you here," Cynthia said and met Ivy with a hurtful look. "You ran away again."

"Cynthia, I –"

Whatever excuse Ivy had wanted to offer remained unspoken, as Katrina rushed past Ivy to embrace her friend. Every day of separation, days filled with the thought of the other's death weighed on Katrina, and she choked a tear. She held onto this moment, carved each detail into her memory, afraid to lose the fleeting beauty of reunion. After a moment of motionlessness, Cynthia melted into the touch and wrapped her arms around her.

"I have to tell you so much," Katrina said after pulling back.

Cynthia wore an honest smile on the rarest of occasions, faking it with the perfection of yearlong practice whenever etiquette expected a friendly façade, but this time, her smile was genuine.

"Shouldn't you be at the palace right now?" Ivy asked.

"And you?" Cynthia returned. She was grasping for an emotionless tone she couldn't quite pull off. "I let Aura and Helbram distract Howzer, so he should be occupied with preventing them from performing flight maneuvers all throughout the castle for the next hours. I wanted to know if you plan on coming back at all in the near future."

"I'm sorry Cynthia, but there's this thing we have to do, and the less you know about it, the better," Lance said. "We'll be gone for some time though, you're right about that."

"This is about Mordred, isn't it?"

Stunned silence befell the room, bordering on the first stages of panic. Lance's and Gaius' minds were already running wild with speculation on how Cynthia figured out Mordred's role in the affair, but Katrina knew her friend well enough to suspect what troubled her. And Ivy knew too.

"You've had another «Dark Omen» attack. And you didn't tell mom and dad about it. Again. When did it start?"

Cynthia squeezed her right hand tight and averted her gaze. "About a week ago. The images are still vague, but Mordred is always there. I… I want it to stop, Ivy, please. I don't want any of this to happen."

"We'll make sure that it won't," Ivy said and stepped forward.

Katrina had never seen the two sisters hug, but now Cynthia was clinging onto Ivy, and tears rolled down her cheeks. The withdrawn role Cynthia had played for so long cracked to reveal her true self, for just one small moment, and the tensed muscles of her right palm slacked to reveal the scar that disfigured the fair skin.

The scar that coincided with the day Cynthia had awoken her magical ability, «Dark Omen», which had caused her nothing but pain and fear of the day where she would see the faces of her family in her nightmares. The scar Katrina had created. After all these years, its edges brimmed with Demon magic, a ragged patch of deep, ominous purple.

Cynthia trembled. "It has always come to fruition, everything I see in these nightmares. In the end, they always die."

"I know. But this time, things will be different. We know what to expect and how to strike back. Will you do something for me in the meantime?" Cynthia nodded into Ivy's shoulder, unable to twist words into a response. "Stay strong for Helbram and Aura. They'll need you while we're gone. And maybe don't tell mom and dad about this when they come back. Just say I ran off with Lance like I always do."

The tender smile lighting her features disappeared as soon as Cynthia turned to Katrina. "Will you go with them?"

"I want to help, and I want to make sure that you will be free from those nightmares," Katrina said while taking Cynthia's right hand with hers. "I have so many things to tell you, but I hope it's okay if I do when we get back."

Cynthia was tempted to pull her hand away, or maybe a reflex ingrained into her mind and body over the course of the past years made her twitch. This scar represented all the imperfections she had suppressed or driven out, a memorial of the defiant child she wanted to forget. But regardless of her hesitance, in the end, Cynthia allowed her fingers to intertwine with Katrina's.

"Okay," she said, and the single word carried more honesty than all the chatter of rules and royal behavior she hid behind.

* * *

**(A/N): **Another slower chapter for character building, only that this one is far longer than the last. Lance's section and Ivy's flashback at the beginning are among my favorite scenes for them, so I hope you enjoyed these parts as much as I did. The next chapter will officially kickstart the third act, which mean the story will move a little faster from here on. And we'll spend more time with Mordred and the Knights of the Round Table. I hope you're looking forward to it.


	20. Prices to Pay

– Seven years before The Fall –

The sky above the canopy was clear, the air contained no hint of rain, and the orchestra of birds steered into the grand finale of their symphony. In short, today was the perfect day for an adventure. If not for the teeny-tiny fact that Lance's cousin was hellbent on ruining his plans.

"You shouldn't go," Cynthia said, but Lance shrugged her advice off and concentrated on maintaining his balance on the uneven surface of the turned-over tree trunk with a diameter as large as two grown Fairies. "I mean it, Lancelot, dad told us countless times that he can only keep an eye on us as long as we're inside the boundaries of the Fairy King's Forest."

"You focus too much on what other people tell you instead of focusing on what's fun," Aeral huffed and swung a playful punch at Lance that he evaded with a calculated stumble. "The Holy War is over, no one's seen a single Demon in three years, and there's nothing out there that is dangerous. Relax."

"You don't understand! If you go, bad things will happen!"

Beyond frustrated by Cynthia's persistence, Lance cut his pretended fight with Aeral short and catapulted himself from the bark to drop to the ground in front of his cousin. With swinging ease, he deflected the force of impact by bending his knees against the grass cushions. Aeral didn't bother to join them and instead performed a string of risky flight maneuvers by flapping his new wings. Showoff.

"Is this about the dream you had?" Lance asked, but he wasn't too interested in an answer.

Cynthia had jolted out of sleep due to nightmares for three days in a row, zealous to say that what woke her were real images instead of dreams, and no amount of loving comfort and attention from her parents had weakened her conviction. At first, Lance had shown empathy towards Cynthia's disturbed state of mind, but her insistence had long passed the point of annoyance.

"It wasn't a dream," Cynthia snapped as anticipated. "Dad doesn't take this seriously, but that doesn't give you any reason to push your luck. The world outside the Fairy King's Forest is dangerous."

"Mind you, I happen to be gifted with exceptional luck," Aeral said and cut his self-centered performance short to land beside them. Although he was short by human standards, he beat Lance by about half a foot, a constant source of light-hearted mocking between them. Which, in most cases, rendered Lance as the butt of the joke.

"Lance, please, don't go," Cynthia pleaded while flexing the muscles of her right hand. The hand scarred by Demon magic.

"Why don't you annoy your siblings, Cynthy? If you crave attention so badly, I'm sure you'll find some there," Aeral said and flapped his wings to signify his impatience.

Lance took to the hint and set his feet into motion. He directed them through roots, moss, and low-growing foliage with natural-born talent and without needing to pay attention to their movement. Excitement at the upcoming journey replaced the annoyance in his veins, and his feet became lighter in accordance. But Cynthia refused to let him go without a fight and followed him on her shorter legs.

"If you keep going, I will never speak another word with you!"

Lance only waited a heartbeat longer to place his next step. "I can live with that."

The path Aeral chose meandered through the mighty conifers Lance was so familiar with, where the ground was even and easy to traverse, before Areal led him to an area Lance chose to steer clear from whenever he had the option. In this part of the Fairy King's Forest, the population thinned out, and only once in a while the buzz of Fairy wings could be heard behind the boughs. The influence of the Fairy King fleeted. Trees grew without restraint and order, engaged in a battle for the life-preserving energy of the sun that filtered through the leaves of older vegetations. Lance pulled tempo out of his walk and navigated through the maze of roots that erosion had dug up from the ground, but even with the difficulties of terrain in mind, he pondered too long before he heaved himself over a gigantic root sprawled in the middle of his path.

Aeral had little kindness to spare for his slowness. "I know your arms are super short and super weak, but you could at least try to outpace the snail next to you," he mocked and disappeared between a curtain of vines hanging from the branches overhead. "This is the first time I get to step outside the border and not just hover in front of it. Megine's gonna be so jealous. And Ivy will probably punch you straight to the Capital of Dead because you didn't tell her."

His cackle grew fainter as he rushed on ahead.

Lance sighed and hurried to catch up, even though he suspected Aeral had long circled around and was sneaking up on his back to pull an unimaginative prank. But despite his friend's bouncy attitude, he failed to prevent his hand from shaking as he pushed a branch out of his face. Lance told himself the trembling was nothing more than the giddiness in the face of a groundbreaking adventure towards where no other Fairy had gone before.

That sounded a lot better than nervousness born out of the nightmares of a six-year-old.

The trees became sparser, shrubbery changed from light-averse mosses and mushrooms to grasses and the occasional clover, and the air carried lighter scents. But there was more to the change, a feeling of something that had accompanied Lance all his life severed and taken from him. With the trees thinning out, so too did the aura of Fairy magic. In its stead, a hollowness invaded the depths of his gut, and he hesitated to make the next step.

Then, from one moment to the next, they had left their home and stood on the open field of northern Liones.

"Everything's so spacious out here," Aeral said with a stupid grin. "Look at all that sky! What do you think, how long will it take to fly from one edge of this plain to the other?"

"Many days," Lance said and squinted against the brightness. Unlike Aeral, he had stepped out of the forest before but never without the company of his parents. "The human land goes on until it hits the ocean, a lake that stretches until the end of the world. I've seen it on a map."

"The ocean? That sounds amazing! Lance, you and I are gonna go to this ocean one day. This world has so many adventures, and we've only scratched the surface of it all. I bet no Fairy before us has seen this ocean, but we'll be the first ones."

"You bet we will!"

The unfiltered sunlight chased away the worries Cynthia had planted in his head, and Lance hurried through the rolling hills of grass almost as tall as him. Late-blooming sunflowers reared their heads towards the light, and from time to time, Aeral shot down from the sky to push Lance in good fun. Lance repaid him by flicking a handful of dirt into his face.

As Lance ran from Aeral's retaliation, he stumbled into a strange metal item that lay hidden between the grass blades. He stopped in time to throw the thing on the ground a puzzled look when Aeral bumped into him from behind, and together they tumbled to the earth in a mess of arms and legs and wings.

"Ow," Aeral complained and brushed crumbs of dirt from his wings. "If giving up when someone chases you is your new tactic, let me tell you it's usually not this effective."

Lance was too transfixed by the strange item resting a few feet away to answer. The metal of its surface reflected the light and made it difficult to examine its outline and purpose, but the object appeared to be can-shaped and about the length of his forearm. Ornate bronze-work ran down the length of its body, curved symbols of an ancient language, but Lance failed to remember where he had seen them before.

Aeral sat up – he happened to use Lance's body as a cushion in the process – and noticed the metal can. The gleam in his eyes spread and sparked a grin on his face.

"Do you think it's from humans?" Aeral asked and robbed closer. "It looks like it's from humans. This is so awesome! I've never seen something like it before. What does it do? Does it do anything?"

Lance rummaged through his brain but couldn't place the familiar vibes he felt radiating from the can. A type of magic with a clear intent… "If it's human-made, why does it lie out here, so close to the Fairy King's Forest?"

"No clue, but finder's keeper's seems fair game to me."

Lance eyed the can with increased apprehension as the metal harmlessly reflected the sunlight. "We don't know what this is. Maybe we should ask someone first. Dad should know what it is if it's from humans."

But his warning remained unheard. Enamored by the tempting shimmer of the can, Aeral left Lance's side to reach out for the item. His fingertips hovered a foot away from its surface when the can snapped open. Strings of energy and light spilled out of the can and wavered for a split second to taste the air. They twisted and turned, and grew until they were as thick as ropes. The greedy slings wrapped around the one who had awakened them, and Aeral screamed as they buried themselves into his flesh. More slings shot out of the can to weave a net around Aeral's body, strangling, cutting, deforming. He gurgled as the pressure around his throat increased. The symbols on the can glowed, fed by stolen energy.

Lance stayed put. Without the ability to move, he watched the live being dragged out of his friend. Aeral twitched. Lance stared. Speed of time froze until Lance could see each of Aeral's muscles spasming out of control as the can robbed them of their energy. The fight took long, so long, the process continued, and Lance saw all of it play out with a fraction of time's speed. The victor was decided from the beginning, and yet the battle _did not end_. The can took more and more to satisfy its hunger, feasted on despair and magic, swallowed every ounce of energy the strings could rip out of their victim. Aeral struggled to free himself, clawed his hands into the dirt, coughed for air and life and help that would not come. The slings pulled tighter, his breath ran shorter, his movement slowed.

"Lance." Aeral's voice was only a whisper. "You need to get back… get home… save yourself…"

But Lance stayed.

Stayed until Aeral's wings were sliced into fragments as the slings cut into them like wire, stayed until Aeral's eyes looked at him without recognition, stayed until the can had done its devilish deed, and its runes glowed white. Time moved on without him. The birds resumed their song. His hand was half-outstretched towards his friend, but some time along the way he had forgotten how to move.

His fingers still hovered in the air when the Fairy King found him.

"Lance, he is gone. I can't heal him anymore. I need to get you back to your mother."

But wasn't he the Fairy King? Didn't he have the power and the duty to keep all Fairies alive and well? Lance wanted, needed to see hope and determination in King's eyes, but there was nothing to latch onto beyond an ocean of guilt, roared up by the storms of regret.

His hand was shaking when King enclosed Lance's fingers with his own and picked him up. And even though Lance wanted to scream at his uncle that they couldn't leave Aeral behind in this forsaken vast land out there, where his magic would soon belong to the desperate, greedy human who had sat up this trap, he kept his mouth closed and his eyes open until Aeral's mangled form had burned itself into his memory.

The way back home rushed past Lance in a blur, but the worried face of his mother broke through the haze as she tore Lance out of her brother's arms.

"Another cylinder outside the borders," King said. His voice sounded hoarse, as though the task of carrying Lance had used up his emotional and not his physical reserves. "Lance and Aeral must have stumbled right into it. I should have made sure there were no more around, I should have been more observant, I should have…"

Elaine lacked the courage to deny King's claims, nor was she able to look at him for longer. When she spun around to flee, Lance caught a glimpse of Cynthia, who stared through Lance's skin and heart and memories to read what she had long seen in her nightmares, all while flexing the muscles of her right hand.

The hand scarred with Demon magic.

* * *

The capital of Camelot presented itself to them as a gloomy ruin. Liones might have displayed distant sorrow over the death of King Arthur in the state of its flags or in nervous tension with citizens and travelers alike, but here, the grief was omnipresent. All matters of custom and commerce had been put to rest, despite the wide-open gates inviting to the heart of the kingdom. What little townsfolk passed through the streets spoke in hushed tones if at all, and hurried to their places to be with lowered heads, quick to leave the unprotected alleyways. The silence of a graveyard hanging over the city weighted down their minds.

The military presence had also shrunken since Ivy's last visit. The two low-ranked guards at the gates went by their duty for the simple sake of normalcy amidst the turmoil. They didn't pay Errin a second look as she passed through, while Lance and Ivy flanked her with a few steps' distance. Not a single patrol roamed the insides of the city.

Errin had resumed to work her jaw in utter silence. Ivy wished Katrina had stayed with them for a little longer; she might have been able to keep Errin from brooding or better her mood with a handful of empathetic words. Ivy herself had no idea how to approach Errin on a normal day, and, frankly, she was too tired to try.

Alas, Katrina and Gaius had left for Belialuin as soon as Gaius had deemed his magical resources sufficiently filled to attempt a second high-distance teleportation, and the pair had bid them goodbye before they had reached the city walls. Ivy hoped they would keep their heads out of trouble because a city ruin that had once been swarming with all types of power-hungry magic-wielders and that had since been shunned by humans and non-humans alike called for more misfortune than the two needed.

When Errin stopped walking for no apparent reason, Ivy nearly bumped into her.

"Something the matter, Errin?" Lance asked, but Errin denied him an answer and stared on ahead to where the street narrowed to the archway marking the entrance to the castle complex. As the city itself, the palace appeared deserted. Even the doves had abandoned the structure.

"It hasn't started yet…" Errin muttered before remembering her company. "You two go on ahead without me, I have something else to do."

Ivy frowned. "What do you mean with 'something else'? You were the one who wanted to tag along – Errin, wait!"

But Errin had taken to her heels and disappeared into a sideway and around a corner. Ivy and Lance remained on the empty road, stunned out of their mind. Now _that_ had been uncalled for.

"What's gotten into her all of a sudden?"

Lance's eyes were locked onto the alley into which Errin had disappeared. "Don't know, but she seemed pretty distressed. You know, more than usual. I wonder what she meant that hasn't started yet…"

"You might wanna probe your brain for that thought while walking," Ivy said. He wore the lost expression his face always donned when enthralled by a riddle. He had, in fact, acted quiet and thoughtful since they had left Liones.

Soon enough – with some pushing and pulling from Ivy's side – the archway lay behind them to reveal the castle's grand yard beyond. The palace's walls and towers surrounded the plaza from all but the northern side and created an almost perfect rotunda with paths leading towards the military quarters, royal halls, and gardens in their respective directions. Every step Lance and Ivy made was accompanied by the sound of gravel crunching beneath their feet. Against the silence from before, the noise rung too loud in Ivy's ears, and she scanned the yard for unwanted listeners. But once again, no guards came forward to prevent them from going further.

Ivy opted for the way straight ahead, deeper into the inner castle complex, but Lance waved her to follow him to the descending path to their right. Voices from the lower terraces of the garden travelled towards them, and since it was as good as any place to start the search for Mordred, Ivy trudged after Lance.

The path meandered through zigzagging archways and hedge mazes, sometimes adorned by tunnels of ivy and roses, sometimes flanked by orange trees, always leading down the hillside. Here and there, marble busts with wise, old faces watched their way through the garden. Somewhere out of view, a fountain splashed. Ivy had visited the garden before, but the layout was foggy in her memory, and she could do little more than head to where the voices originated and hope they would lead them somewhere other than a dead end.

When the garden design changed to replace flowerbeds with an open area of cut grass neighbored by archways on ornate pillars, Ivy realized what Errin had alluded to before she had disappeared.

The yard was packed with people. A great many of them wore the crest and armor of Camelot, but delegations of other nations stood to the side, and the symbols of Demetia, Gwydden, and Liones dotted the crowd. When Ivy tiptoed to make up for this cursed tiny human form, she spotted Gilthunder and Margaret amongst them. Both wore the grim faces of sorrow. But compared to the delegation to the far left, the cluster of nations appeared like a crowd of sameness.

The Seven Deadly Sins stood out like a splash of color on a black-and-white drawing, and their magical presence overshadowed the human crowd by such a leap it could make one dizzy. The elite of Fairy, Giant, Goddess, and Demon, and two who could hardly qualify as humans. Legends among commoners. Only Merlin was absent from their ranks.

And then, in front of the assembly, his face and statue all too familiar, Mordred commanded the scene. His eyes were bare of the cold-hearted killing intent that would come to fill them later, but the edges of his chin had sharpened to erase the softness of youth from his features. Ivy knew him well enough to see the slight tension in his shoulders, but to most people in the crowd, he had to appear as a man of strength and confidence. A front he had perfected since Ivy's last visit to Camelot.

Behind Mordred, the stone image of his late father marked the reason for the extensive gathering, a figure of legend and heroism. They had never looked less alike.

"King Arthur of Camelot was often referred to as the greatest king of his time, by his allies and his enemies alike," Mordred said, and his voice carried to the furthest corners of the yard. "His death does not lessen his achievements and the goals he has striven towards in his lifetime. Or at least it should not. He had acted with the best for Britannia in mind at all times, defeated the barbarian tribes, and forged Camelot into the strongest and most expansive nation mankind has seen since the beginning of time. But most of all, his reign ensured the twenty-five years of peace we all have been blessed to experience. His legacy is one of greatness." Murmurs of agreement rolled through the assembled people, and Mordred paused to increase their effect.

"It is my duty and my honor to continue my father's work where he had been robbed of the chance to do it himself. In his remembrance, I will serve Camelot and the entirety of Britannia to the best of my abilities, so that my father's wish of one single realm of unity may come to fruition. The way there is paved with uncertainty, with conflict, maybe even bloodshed. But throughout three thousand years of wars fought beyond our understanding, mankind has persisted. Whatever it may cost, I will pay the price to ensure it stays this way." Sparse applause emerged from a group of royal loyalists, and Mordred displayed that shallow smile of his. "A great man, who took it upon himself to teach a boy others had given up hope for, once told me that the best of us are the first ones to leave this world. But if we all aim to follow their footsteps, their sacrifice will never be in vain. For mankind!"

The chant was quickly picked up by the crowd, and a hundred voices joined the anthem. "FOR MANKIND!"

As Mordred left the stage and the rows grew thin, Ivy and Lance pushed deeper into the shadows of the archway that surrounded the burial ground for the royal family to avoid recognition by familiar faces.

"Do you think the council denied him the crown because he didn't finish with 'For Camelot'?" Ivy asked and followed Gilthunder with her eyes as he led his circle of knights and mourners down the path she and Lance had taken.

"Well, it's certainly an incident some people won't be too happy with," Lance said while scanning the crowd for the members of said council. "But I'm pretty sure they've had that scheme in mind before Arthur took his last breath. Everyone knows they're corrupt. Mordred's young age just gave them the perfect excuse."

"And yet they always keep their seats because the trade they bring in fills people's pockets. Humans are awful."

Lance nodded but didn't seem to share her sentiment. "At least we can all agree that Mordred's speech aged _very_ poorly."

This exact point kept nagging at Ivy. Because somehow, despite all the crimes Mordred was about to commit, crimes he might have already laid out as his twisted masterplan, his speech had sounded sincere. As though he did believe in peace, unity, and all these other noble concepts King Arthur had held in such high regards. Yet, in less than one moon circle, Mordred would deceive the words he had spoken at his father's grave.

Did Mordred's change run so deep that she could no longer tell his honesty from his lies? Had he already decided to murder her parents who were taking their turn to express their condolences?

* * *

Lance had never spent the time with Mordred to call him a friend, but he took no disliking of his character. On the rare occasion that Lance had crossed path with the crown prince of Camelot, he had found him to be sympathetic and thoughtful, attributes Lance valued as some of his better ones. As often as Mordred had an open ear for someone else's worries, he could switch to reserved and aggressive behavior in an instant if situations developed contrary to his liking. In that regard, he shared a set of similarities to Errin.

At the moment, however, Mordred leaned into neither of his emotional extremes. As the graveyard cleared of visitors, conspirators, and speculators, Mordred remained a lonely entity before the graves of his parents.

Eighteen winters had turned Guinevere's tombstone into a sight of decay, and frost had eaten its way into the stone to crack its structure many times over. A figurine donning her features stood in the small alcove below her name, and a set of white flowers had been placed in front of her stone image for the occasion. Compared to the grand monument built for King Arthur, the tomb of his wife looked small and transient. Theirs were the only graves in the area; Arthur's royal bloodline didn't reach farther than himself, and the crypts housing the bodies of Camelot's previous kings had burned alongside the city near the end of the Holy War.

Ivy made no move, even though the yard was nearly deserted, so Lance figured they would best stay hidden behind the pillars of the half-opened walkway until Mordred would leave. Or at least for as long as they might face exposure from Meliodas.

The Captain of the Sins had stayed put where his fellows and Elizabeth had left the scene, his expression unusually troubled. When he thought to be alone with Mordred, he stepped forward, but Mordred denied him the chance to open the conversation.

"Harlequin has already told me that things will eventually get better, so don't bother. I can't claim I've never been thankful for your advice, but I doubt it will be of any use today."

"Well, then it's a good thing I wanted to ask you how things are going. That way you can do all the talking, and I'll be the judge on how much use my advice will be," Meliodas said.

"What do you think?!" Mordred spit out, and the hand lying on the hilt of his sword tightened its grip. "Now that my father is gone, the remnants of the tribes and nations he's made peace with threaten to revolt – Carados has been outspoken about it for days. The kingdom of Orkney sent their 'condolences' to the king's passing and apologized for being 'unable to attend his funeral'. They are likely planning the expansion of their territory as we speak. At least they did send a message; Errin didn't even bother with that. No one has seen her since yesterday."

There it was, the familiar anger Lance had been waiting for Mordred to display. But this time, the heat of his words was accompanied by a hollowness, the hollowness of the defeated.

"Give her some time," Meliodas said and reached out to Mordred, but he never touched his arm. "She'll return once she's sorted her mind."

The fury plain on his face, Mordred turned half a step to restore the distance between himself and his longtime mentor. "I no longer depend on her sorting her mind. If this means that I have to put up with disloyal tribes and greedy kings on my own, so be it. I've prepared for this all my life."

"You're not alone in this, Mordred," Meliodas said. Mordred huffed a humorless laugh. "King and I and the rest of the Sins will always have your back. Just like with Arthur."

"Yes, he's told me of your shared adventures. _Many_ times." Mordred paused, and, for a moment, the cold in his eyes emerged. A cold so complete it drove him to conceive The Fall of Liones, in spite or because of the deaths the act would cause. "Unfortunately, you are the last person who could help me with what I must do…"

Mordred's words grew into a threat, certain and unforgiving, the executioner looming over Meliodas' head with his blade raised for the final swing.

But Meliodas refused to give up the man who he had helped form. "Did you mean it when you said you want peace for mankind?"

Mordred halted but did not turn back. "You still doubt me?"

As Meliodas gave no response, Mordred continued his walk with the wide steps of a man who had other places to be, other problems to solve. Defeated, Meliodas stood in the shadow of Arthur's statue. He raised his eyes to the stone face, perhaps to ask for advice or forgiveness. But Arthur, greatest king of Britannia, was dead, had left this world before his time, and his silent image had no words to offer to Meliodas. No words to restrain Mordred.

The ghastly feeling of helplessness invaded Lance's gut. He needed to act.

"Where are you going?" Ivy hissed and grabbed Lance's sleeve when he attempted to follow Mordred.

"I'll see if I can force Mordred to make a mistake. We need to find out what sort of magic trickery he used to defeat the Sins. We promised Errin to at least try. If he realizes that we know about his plans, he will get nervous and lead us right to the answer."

"Or he will just stab you."

Lance met Ivy's worried gaze. "In the worst-case scenario, that could be the way to get Mordred arrested for murder before he can start a war. But it won't come down to it as long as you are around."

Ivy bit her lips but let go of Lance's sleeve. Meliodas failed to notice them, his attention rested on Arthur's tomb, and as soon as they had left the burial ground, Lance and Ivy broke into a sprint to catch up to Mordred.

He had taken a detour on his way through the gardens, and only through luck did Lance and Ivy ran into him before he reached the palace and his company of Round Table knights that awaited him there. As he heard the two pairs of hurried footsteps approaching him, Mordred stopped in front of a three-layered fountain. Figurines engaged in combat adorned the basins, a liberal depiction of one of King Arthur's victorious battles. Water sloshed past the marble ankles of the defeated knights of Stronghold. A conflicted expression that was impossible to decipher distorted Mordred's features as he recognized his pursuers.

"Ivy, Lance, I was unaware of your visit," he said over the roars of the fountain. "I'm afraid I don't make for an outstanding host at the moment. Perhaps someone else can show you around…"

Lance ignored the offer and Mordred's pretended civility. "Arthur's death was a shock to everyone. You are handling the situation as well as you can, given the circumstances. After your impressive speech about peace and the survival of humans, I'm sure everyone in the crowd felt the same."

Mordred nodded but showed no sign of wanting to dwell on the topic. His eyes jumped between Ivy and Lance in search for an answer to their unexpected presence in Camelot; they fact that the two had not been with their parents had aroused his suspicions. Drops from the fountain collected in his hair and the white ceremonial cape draped around his tensed shoulders.

"It sounded like you had concrete plans in mind for your time as his successor," Lance continued. "Did you already lay out a strategy on how to deal with the other kingdoms? Liones, for example? The minds and hearts of the northern people might not respond so enthusiastically to the prospect of one single realm of unity. And don't forget the Sins; if they happen to disagree with the course you have in mind for Camelot, they would pose a hurdle almost impossible to overcome, wouldn't they?"

Mordred's eyes widened for a heartbeat before he regained control over his features. He had no confirmation that Lance and Ivy knew more than they should, but if Lance increased the pressure a little more, his paranoia would get the better of him. He opened his mouth for another remark on The Fall, but Mordred beat him to the case.

"Has your trust in this world ever been challenged, Lance?" he asked and made one step forward. "Did you witness something so unfair, so unjust that you swore to yourself that you would do anything in your power to make sure disaster would never repeat itself? Have you seen the desperate greed of others ruin and end the life of someone too weak to defend themselves?"

Lance staggered backwards as Mordred made another step. He couldn't know, why should he? Aeral had been the victim of a terrible accident. An accident that repeated before his inner eye when he placed his head on a pillow to sleep, an accident Lance had failed to prevent. An accident that had driven him to become a Holy Knight. To safe those too weak to defend themselves…

"Power has never been shared," Mordred said, "but if no more than seven hold the majority of magic in the world, what remains for the rest? Now, if you excuse me, I have a council meeting to attend to and further business that demands my attention afterwards. But I will look forward to resume our talk some other time."

Ivy's hand and voice trembled when she raised both towards Mordred as he passed them. "Don't go, Mordred. There have to be other ways..."

Mordred regarded her with a look of pained affection, but his resolve did not waver. "Do me a favor, both of you. Stay out of this."

Then he was gone. And when he returned from the council meeting two hours later, uncrowned but all the more confirmed in his belief, he assembled his Knights of the Round Table and left Camelot without a minute wasted. The one-month window had shrunken to a fragment of the time.

* * *

Like last time, the afternoon of King Arthur's funeral faded into drizzle. For most people, the weather held no particular meaning since they had all crawled into the coziness of their homes, and as long as nothing of great importance came along to deal with, they wouldn't bother to set a foot outside. The training ground on the palace's opposite side from the gardens failed to attract the pairs and groups of knights it saw on other days, and the rivulets between the cobblestones were by no means the sole excuse for the lack of activity.

Errin didn't take exception to the lousy weather. She rejoiced at the absence of spectators.

She set one foot forward and followed up the motion with an upper-cut. The slippery ground stole the precision out of her steps, so Errin buried her teeth deeper into the insides of her cheek, moved her back foot aside now that it no longer held her balance, and continued the chain of attack. One full turn brought her back to the opening position. Raindrops soaked her hair and eyebrows. She repeated the combination.

Every single muscle strain of this basic sword skill sequence had long been ingrained into her memory, but she paid extra attention to her form and drove each movement to perfection. Three-hit-combo, upper-cut, wide slash. Push the enemy backwards, rob them of their balance, strike to the opening. Always anticipate a retaliatory attack.

Mordred's advice repeated like a mantra in her head, and she struck her imaginative foe with more vigor. Raindrops splashed on the blade of her sword as she caught them midair. Mordred, Mordred, it was always Mordred who haunted her mind. So much of what defined her life was tied to him.

Errin had dreaded to hear his funeral speech a second time. She dreaded the betrayal in his eyes he would cover by an understanding smile. Instead she had trusted her instincts to flee, as she always did when someone came close enough to hurt her. Last time – a time Mordred would never know had happened – she had stood by his side. But even then, the words and the responsibility had all been his, and Errin had barely stayed in the capital long enough to hear the council deny Mordred the crown.

Left, right, forward, upward, low-aimed slash.

She thought she could handle to see him, could stand the guilt that had grown between them. But she could not overcome this wall. Or maybe she was too weak to try.

Perhaps she should turn her back to all this mess. Let Lance and Ivy continue with the path they chose to take. In the end, Mordred would either be dead or the tyrant ruler of Britannia. And the only worry she would have to deal with would be the burning question of whether or not she could have made a difference.

The easy way out.

Her sword weighed heavy in her hands, and no matter how frantically Errin clawed her fingers around the hilt, wetness and exhaustion made her grip feeble. She couldn't run away, not this time, otherwise she would never be able to bear her own reflection. Mordred had always been beside her, had been supportive and understanding, had become her guiding light and lifeline when she had had no one else to count on. When the world had turned away, he had offered her a hand. She needed to repay this debt.

While her heart pitter-pattered from the adrenalin of the fight, regardless of its low stakes, Errin used her dripping sleeve to rub the water from her blade before letting it slide into its sheath. She had traded her heavy armor for a protective doublet over light chain mail that would in an emergency barely protect her torso. But the movability advantage made up for the reduced defense if she managed to capitalize on the speed bonus. Lance wore no armor at all, and he was doing fine.

When Errin emerged from the trance of her training session, she was surprised to no longer have the yard to herself. Mark, one of Mordred's loyalists and known for his quick tongue, was approaching her with an overt grin.

"Are you training so hard because you fear the next time we two get to duel each other?" Mark asked and fidgeted with the weapon hanging at his side. "Guess you know it already, but Mordred's been looking for you."

"I wanted to speak with him right away, but I lost track of time," Errin deflected. Mark was an honorable knight, albeit a little too nosy for his own good, and she didn't want to give him an opening to pick apart her thoughts.

"You should hurry then, he might already be on his way out of the capital," Mark said. Errin stared at him as all logical thought process escaped her.

"He's leaving?!"

"Yeah, right after the council meeting that should have ended… about now. Turns out Gawain stumbled over some juicy information on his mission, and you know Mordred, he wants to investigate right away."

Errin felt like the more Mark talked, the less likely she was to understand a word of what he was saying. "Wasn't Gawain at the funeral today?" she asked. The fellow Holy Knight had attended Mordred's funeral speech last time – the same as every other member of the Knights of the Round Table.

Mark swept a handful of raindrops from his once shiny shoulder plate; a fruitless effort considering the torrents pouring down on them. "That's why you should check in with the Round Table more often. No, Gawain was asked to do some research in Belialuin for Mordred. Apparently, he found some obscure cross-references about the location of a hidden source of magic buried underneath the City of Wizards. If you ask me, there's a reason for why people stay clear of that place. Common sense is the word I'd use."

"Gawain is still at Belialuin?" Errin asked. Panic seared her throat. Katrina and Gaius would have no fighting chance if they were ambushed by one of Mordred's most competent followers.

"He and his two braindead trolls, Iseo and Ronal. I'm just glad I don't have to put up with them for a while. Though I should probably be insulted that Mordred didn't order me to accompany him."

Errin fought her unease with a deep breath tasting of rain and metal. She had no way to reach Katrina and Gaius in time; she would have to trust their capabilities to protect themselves and use the magic powers at their disposal. But while she could do nothing for them, Errin could prevent Mordred from laying his hands on the source of magic power that would no doubt give him the edge over the Sins and their allies in the battle for Liones.

When she addressed Mark, her question brimmed with calm resolve. "Where did Gawain sent Mordred?"

"Avalon. One of its many springs is supposed to accommodate the magical power of an entire nation."

As Errin's hopes sank further, the spark of determination reignited inside her, if for no other reason than for the prospect of stopping Mordred before it was too late. Before he could commit a crime he would be unable to atone for.

"Mark, do me a favor and send for someone to prepare my horse. I will go after the crown prince," Errin ordered and made use of the steel of superiority with which she rarely strengthened her voice.

Mark bowed a notch, a motion born out of drill and reflex. Judging from his expression, he was surprised to have done so, maybe as much as Errin was. "It will be done in no time. Excuse me asking, but will you be travelling alone as usual?"

She hesitated for a heartbeat. "No, I will be accompanied by two people I trust."

A handful of minutes later, Mark personally handed Errin the reigns of her horse, escorted by his Holy Knight colleague Laurelin. The older woman was holding the two additional horses Errin had ordered with a displeased expression on her face.

"You shouldn't leave the capital at such dire times, Lady Errin," Laurelin said, and the term of honor made Errin scowl. "Especially now that the crown prince has left on such short notice."

Errin had no time to deal with Mordred's devoted followers. "This is the exact reason why I must go. Mordred needs to be brought to his senses before he will create an incident that will surely escalate in war. Who's in charge of the Holy Knights at the moment?"

"Sir Escanor," Laurelin answered. "Since Sir Nashtar is accompanying Sir Mordred, he will oversee the Knights of the Round Table on top of his own men."

"Good. Keep it that way."

Errin was about to contemplate as to how she was supposed to meet up with Lance and Ivy – sending Mark to search after them seemed unfair – when they emerged from the gates all on their own.

Mark grinned as he saw them. "Hey Lance, care for a rematch fight? The last one was – what, three months ago?"

"You're only asking because you beat me without even trying," Lance said with a sour expression. "I'll pass."

"What about your companion? Princess Ivy, wasn't it?"

"Just Ivy. And we're in a bit of a hurry." Ivy turned to address Errin. "Mordred headed out of the capital a few minutes ago; we need to go now if we want to catch up."

"I know," Errin said and mounted her horse. "He's on his way to the springs of Avalon. We have to assume that whatever it was he used to enact The Fall is located there."

"Lady Errin, you don't suggest you will be travelling with _them_?!" Laurelin cut in and scrutinized Lance's and Ivy's scuffed appearance. To be fair, they were not in their most presentable state, and weeks' worth of traveling and fighting had left their marks on their clothing. But Errin couldn't care less.

"As a matter of fact, yes, I do intent to travel with them," she said. "I would exchange any of Camelot's Holy Knights for their company in a heartbeat. Now, be so kind and hand Lance his horse."

Laurelin gaped at Errin's audacious remark but did manage to catch herself to do as told and drop the two sets of reigns into Lance's lose palm. He barely noticed, however, as he stared at Errin in a daze. His expression matched Ivy's to a T.

"May we?" Errin asked.

After shaking his bafflement, Lance climbed onto the saddle of one of the horses, and proceeded to pull up Ivy to sit behind him, which made the additional horse obsolete. Ivy grumbled something about walking as soon as they would leave the city walls.

With a click of her tongue, Errin set her horse in motion and directed the animal through the archway and thereby out of the castle complex. The remains of daylight vanished behind low cloudbanks, which promised more rain for the night. Errin ordered her mount to go faster. She refused to give into the illusion that they would reach Avalon before Mordred did, but they might be able to get there in time to prevent worse from happening.

Her resolve might have wavered before.

But not anymore.

* * *

**(A/N)** Nnt canon Lancelot was not what I expected. That one-shot was wild, and I needed some time to process what happened, hence why this chapter is late. Now I feel bad for giving my Lancelot some more trauma to deal with. He needs a break and a hug.


	21. Lost Knowledge

The City of Wizards, known to most as Belialuin – the closest thing to a translation of its original name out of the unpronounceable ancient tongue thus far conceived – was located near the edge of the Britannia Realm, settled between the outer dunes of the Desert Land. Because of the remote location, the ruins had remained untouched by humankind for the past three thousand years. To most, the promises of wisdom far beyond the limits of other ancient sites simply did not warrant the dangers of the Desert Land with its harsh environment swarming with Sandcrawlers.

The fact that those who studied the facets of magic had become a dying breed also had its part to play.

Magic had once flourished in the lands of Britannia and had nourished the five clans in an era of prosperity marked as the Great Peace. But as the individual clans grew in strength and number, the fear emerged that Britannia's magic resources were finite and that the land had never been meant to sustain the needs of all five races. The resulting feud came to be known as the Holy War, a perpetual cycle of conflict for supremacy over Britannia. Alliances were forged and broken, treaties deceived, and bystanders sacrificed until the Goddess Clan declared the Demons as the natural enemy and proposed a plan to seal the entire clan three thousand years ago.

But even in the following time of relative peace, the magic pool of Britannia was competed for. What magic had remained after the disappearance of the Demon and Goddess Clan rapidly decreased as humans extended their rule over the Realm of Britannia. And even after the New Holy War had ended, the prosperity of past days had not returned. Magic was held by few individuals, often expressed in magical abilities that had become rarer still in the past years. No wonder then that hardly anyone chose to study magic in its broadest form.

In this, Gaius made for a nearly extinct exception.

He had asked Merlin many times if she would take him to Belialuin, for its secrets had enticed him since he had first stumbled upon a mention of the city in Merlin's studies, but his mentor had declined his wishes. Either she had been certain nothing of value slumbered in the ruins of her old home, or she chose to avoid the place out of resentment. Possibly due to painful memories. And while Gaius had never taken Merlin as someone of sentimentality, he could begin to emphasize with her reluctance. If he had had a destroyed home to call his own, he would prefer to keep his distance as well.

Dust and sand stirred up in fine clouds as Gaius and Katrina walked down the street that had seen no living soul in millennia. If the term 'street' was fit to describe the line of dirt turning and twisting between the shells of what might have once been brick build houses. A thousand days of fire had scarcely allowed for one brick to stay atop the other. The metal tops of towers had melted, and their bent shapes lay scattered between the ruins, deformed faces to remind of those who perished.

"It's so quiet," Katrina whispered, her voice carried away by another gust of wind howling through the ruins. "Do you know where we should start searching? Everything looks the same to me."

Gaius rummaged around his memories. "According to _The History of Britannia_, there used to be a citadel at the city's center where most texts and manuscripts were stored. I suggest we start there."

Though truth be told, Gaius had no means to tell where the foundations of the city center lay hidden beneath the sand. The only lead he had was an instinctual feeling deep in his chest, a pull that directed him past the burnt houses of Wizards from three thousand years ago. The gods hadn't shown mercy in their assault on the inhabitants, and trails of their suffering still hung in the magic current. Voices of the past cried out in agony, lured Gaius to follow them, and the cacophony of their suffering resonated in his head.

_Let go, give up, you don't belong here, what you cling onto isn't yours, let go and DIE!_

Gaius recoiled from the cold washing over him when he reached out to the oppressive magical energy hanging in the air. The hollowness he had felt when the bird had died in his hands back at the Boar Hat filled him, a hundredfold increased, and drew the air out of his lungs. He felt cold, so cold, three blankets and a lonely candle could not drive out the cold, the cold…

Gaius stopped walking, but if Katrina heard the voices, she gave no sign to show it. He calmed his rapid heartbeat by focusing on her strength and determination, and finally the icy feeling retreated. The voices fell silent. With uneasy steps, Gaius led Katrina further into what he presumed to be the city's heart. Solely based on ancient telling and outdated layouts, his estimation was likely to be subject of miscalculation, but something else made him pause. A faint humming in the air in which epicenter he was standing. Or rather, he was standing on top of it.

"Do you feel it too?" Gaius asked and kneeled down to put his palm against the stone underneath the layers of dust.

Katrina nodded, and her eyes darted towards all directions, an animal startled by a change in environment it could not place. "It's not demonic, but… it's similar."

Gaius had made the same assessment. In all likelihood, the aura was nothing more than an after-trace of the power the Demon King had used to destroy the city, but the possibility remained that it wasn't. A magical item perhaps, buried in these rumored vaults deep beneath their feet?

Gaius brushed away the dust of centuries to reveal what had once been a tile of sandstone. Scorch marks disfigured its surface, but a pattern was still identifiable, lines of complex symmetrical figures carved into the stone. He recognized some of them from Merlin's various texts.

"_Atumeno ekameno bantarumashi_;" Gaius said and was rewarded by an orb of swirling air particles hovering over his outstretched hand.

Careful to avoid further damage to the floor's remains, he let the air escape his grasp in circular lines, mimicking a tornado but with only a fraction of its force, and the wind cleared the surrounding ground of its sand overlay. The floor's pattern lay free in a shadow of its former beauty, but the secret message remained clear as daylight.

"It's some sort of code," Katrina mused and bowed down to better follow one of the countless lines splitting the tiles.

"Try looking at it from further back," Gaius said and made his way to the south-western corner of the constellation.

Katrina did as told, conjured two pairs of Goddess wings, and jumped high to hover a dozen feet above the ground. She scanned the pattern until she realized what Gaius had already discovered, and her eyes lit up.

"It's Britannia! The entire map!"

The solution to a riddle so simple and overt it brought a smile to Gaius' lips. The discomfort and the voices were pushed aside by the soothing thrill of a solved question. What had appeared to be nothing more than a chaotic cluster of magic runes and symbols was a meticulously constructed image embedded into the floor of a great hall in Belialuin's citadel. And together, when looked at from the balcony of an upper floor, the runes formed the outlines of Britannia with all its landmarks and defining features as it had been three thousand years ago. Someone who hadn't spent hours copying and memorizing maps of Britannia would never catch on to that detail – unless they happened to be flying overhead.

Katrina dismissed the magic that kept her afloat and gracefully dropped down next to Gaius. The soft feathers of her wings brushed his cheeks and left a pleasant warmth on his skin.

"But where does that lead us?" she asked as the Goddess triskelion faded to make room for her natural eye color.

"To Belialuin if I'm not mistaking," Gaius answered. While concentrating on the circular emblem pierced by two crossing rhombi to his feet, he spoke the incantation meant to solve the last piece of the puzzle. "_Zimoto shikaharo_."

As the unlocking spell took effect, the emblem – precisely placed where one would find Belialuin on a normal map – began to glow in violet hues. From there the light spread like an epidemic until the entire floor was covered in shining lines and restored the image where it had been burned by divine and demonic fire. Once the light had reached the furthest northern corner of the map, the central tiles folded away and revealed a stairway that lost itself in the dark depths below the citadel.

The invitation was handed out.

Gaius and Katrina exchanged a nervous glance before they descended into the underbelly of Belialuin.

* * *

The longer they walked through the tunnels that followed the staircase, the more Katrina became convinced that they were by no means the first ones to enter this place since the city's destruction. At first, a feeling had agitated her, a constant ping of pressure against the back of her mind, but the signs had multiplied after an hour or so. One of the crossroads they passed had its dust layers set into disarray as though multiple pairs of feet had been shoving over the ground in a debate of where to go next. They had found the burned-out remains of a torch in a corner. Other entrances into Belialuin's tunnel system likely dotted the surface, easier to make out than the one Katrina and Gaius had used. An observant man like Mordred would have found entrance.

But so far, no living creature had crossed their path.

Gaius was leading the way and never hesitated for more than a few seconds whenever the tunnel diverged before resuming onward. How Gaius managed to find a lead worth following, Katrina had no idea; the entirety of Belialuin was covered in so many layers of destructive magic from both the Demon and the Goddess Clan that she struggled to make out any other traces. Despite his confidence in the path they followed, Katrina could tell that Gaius was disturbed. He shivered, and from time to time, his head jerked sideways in search for a sound. But nothing echoed through the stone tunnel except his uneven breath. He had never been one to fill silence with words, but his condition unsettled Katrina.

"We are close now," Gaius said, more to himself than to her. "I am certain the presence of at least one magical item lies a few dozen yards ahead."

"Do all magical items have a distinct presence?" Katrina asked, glad to replace the all-encompassing silence with the sounds of conversation and distract him from the ghosts haunting his thoughts. "I mean, the Time Crystal for example. Do you _feel_ whenever it's around?"

"It is more a matter of might and sensibility," Gaius answered and shifted the orb of flames they used as a source of light into his other hand. "The stronger an item's magic is, the greater its impression in the magic current. Ivy's Shrinking Bracelet is limited in how it can alter its surroundings; therefore, it does not have a presence I am able to track down. But since Ivy has developed a certain familiarity to its magic, she might be able to tell its location if she were to lose it. As for the Time Crystal, I do, in fact, feel its presence. The magic bears some of Merlin's signature working, but there are other, darker facets I cannot place. It is… frustrating."

"And you've never asked Merlin what the crystal is?"

Katrina was certain that he had not – Gaius had always been the type of guy to maltreat his brain cells until they spit out an answer –, and the question leaned dangerously close into personal matters, but she was curious as to how Gaius viewed his mentor. Merlin could be difficult to understand or get along with, and although their mutual fascination for the unknown bound them together, Gaius had rarely shown signs of attachment beyond that.

"No, I have not. One of the things I learned from her teaching is that you are better advised to verify for yourself whether something is true. That way you prevent yourself from blindly following the lies of others. With books, this is quite easy, you can always draw from other sources. People are more… difficult to see through. Often enough they themselves trust in the lies they spread."

"Not all people are like that," Katrina said, and the conviction in her words made Gaius stop and turn towards her. "I would trust anyone of you with my life: Lance, Ivy, Errin… and I trust you, Gaius."

His response came without hesitation. "I do too. You and Merlin are the two people in this world I can talk to without fear of judgement."

Katrina smiled upon his sincerity. Even in the dim light of the tunnel, Gaius' eyes were a manifestation of the clear summer sky. Endlessly blue. Almost unnatural. If only he hadn't buried them into books all his life, then people might have come to see him as Katrina did.

She continued after they had resumed their walk through the labyrinth of tunnels. "She must be worrying about you," Katrina said and ignored another wave of unease creeping down her spine as they passed a deserted crossway.

"Merlin? What makes you think that?"

"Well, if time travel works the way you said it does, then she wouldn't have been able to find you since yesterday noon," Katrina explained, surprised that Gaius hadn't thought about this detail himself. "You disappear for a day without a trace – how could she not worry about you?"

Gaius blinked a few times against the cloudiness of his thoughts. "I always assumed she would be too occupied with Arthur's funeral and the arising conflict with Mordred. It is a matter of far greater importance, after all."

"That's not true. Something like objectively greater importance doesn't exists, and if it does, it's irrelevant. What counts is what's important to you. Of course, I want to protect the innocent people who lost their lives during The Fall – but mostly, I want to do this for my parents. I wouldn't have gone so far for a crowd of strangers, not even for all of Britannia. And you want Merlin to be safe, right?"

"I do."

"See, it's the same thing! Dad always told me that we fight harder for what we care about, that we are stronger when it comes to protecting those who matter to us. And I think he's right."

Gaius hesitated, and his mind needed the extra time to settle an internal debate. Then, he smiled that adorable, frail smile of his. "I trust that you're right."

The tunnel took a sharp turn to the right and ended soon afterwards. The heavy metal-framed door making up the far wall was covered in lines and pictograms of the same style as the Britannia map back on the surface. As Gaius gave the gate a gentle push, one wing swung inwards. Unlocked. With how carefully the entrance to the tunnel maze had been sealed, one would think the vault itself would pose a harder challenge to enter.

"Strange," Gaius said. "I assumed they would set up another confinement spell, maybe one similar to «Perfect Cube». It is possible though, that the effect has faded after such a long time."

They both knew it was unlikely; the gate spell up above had worked the same as it had on the day of its inception, and the Mages and Wizards of Belialuin had been revered as the most competent of their kind for a reason.

Katrina hugged herself in an attempt to combat the cold that made the hair on her arms stand up on edge. She told herself the shivers stemmed from the chill underground compared to the desert-like heat they had endured before.

The room on the other side of the door was loaded with ceiling-high bookshelves, which occupied the space in all kinds of lengths and all kinds of angles and masqueraded the true size of the room. The shelves themselves were filled to the brim with scrolls, scriptures, and heavy volumes, and the wood bend downward under the load. Many more books piled up on the floor. Caskets with peculiar items occupied the space in between, with contents ranging from gemstones and metal trinkets over bottles with unknown liquids bubbling inside all the way to the mummified remains of _bones_. Whether or not they were human, Katrina couldn't tell.

"All of this has been waiting here for centuries, and no one even attempted to find it," Gaius said in awe. "In here, there might just lie the answers to questions no one has been able to answer in three thousand years."

"It will take us weeks to find what Mordred is after," Katrina said, far less enthusiastic than Gaius.

Discouraged by the sheer volume of information they would have to dig through, Katrina let her fingers run over the spine of a weighty tome only for the leather to dissolve under her fingertips. Katrina shrieked and stared in horror at the pile of dust remaining where the book had stood a second ago.

"I feared this would happen," Gaius said. "Most of these works are so old that they can no longer be saved. It makes sense for the citizens of Belialuin to have stored their newer works up in the citadel's official library where they fell victim to the fires. I nevertheless hope that there remain books in better conditions further into the vault."

Gaius dismissed the fireball in his hands – the glowing orbs suspended all over the bookshelves filled the room with enough light –, and the two of them navigated deeper into the library. As a gust of wind blew into their faces from somewhere ahead, the books next to them turned to dust by the dozen. Gaius' expression became grimmer and grimmer by the second, until they entered a section of the library where the books weren't quite as ancient. They stopped at the edge of a large circle of tiles, free of the cluster of bookshelves and likely the center of the room. A bookrest of stone stood in the middle of the symbols drawn or carved into the floor. Did the Mages of Belialuin used to conduct their most secretive spells here, amidst legions of magical items, where the air itself tasted of energy? Gaius stepped forward to inspect the worn volume on top of the bookrest, with pages so battered that the ink had almost faded.

Still, it looked like the book had been placed there less than a few hours ago.

"_The Inevitable Downfall of the Faerie Clans_," Gaius read out loud and furrowed. To Katrina, the book's title sounded awfully similar to a banner slogan a narrow-minded human might come up with. Complete with the misspelling of the word 'Fairy'.

"The usage of plural seems arbitrary to me." Gaius returned to the page that the book had been opened up at and skimmed its content. "According to this, a type of Fairy used to inhabit the springs of Avalon. The author calls them Morgans. They were neither as well-hidden nor as strong in numbers as their relatives in the Fairy King's Forest. It seems they were attacked and eradicated during the early days of the Holy War…"

Gaius was too immersed in the text to hear the metal sound to their left, but Katrina did. It was close. And as the rattling continued, it came closer still.

"Gaius, we need to go. I don't think we're alone anymore."

But by the time Gaius reacted to her continuous tugging at his sleeve and looked up, the bookshelf to their right exploded into a cloud of dust and wooden shrapnel. Three figures emerged from the shadows, all of them armored, all of them wearing the crest of the Knights of the Round Table. Gaius stepped in front of Katrina, and his left hand found hers.

"Merlin's little bookworm," Iseo said, and her cold eyes looked over Gaius with the joy of a hunter who had stumbled across a particularly rare prey. "And he has brought his girlfriend with him. How lovely."

"We don't have time for this game, Iseo," the knight in the middle said. Based on the way he held himself and his commanding tone, he seemed to be the leader of the group.

"What are you doing here, Gaius?" The tall-built man to the left – Gaius had referred to him as Ronal – sounded genuinely concerned about their presence.

"Irrelevant," the leading knight cut in, "they represent a loose end that will undoubtedly proof problematic if we don't deal with it now."

Gaius opened his mouth for an incantation, but before he uttered the first syllable, the knight had raised his hand to silence him. Gaius' grip around Katrina's hand went loose, and an invisible force wrenched him away and against the bookrest. His bones crunched upon impact, but no sound escaped his lips, no pained outcry, not even a groan. He lay still, knocked out with eyes wide open, no longer master of his body.

Ronal reached Katrina before she could aid Gaius. Her struggles to free herself from his grip only earned her a slap against her head. Her vision blacked out for a second.

Gaius' limp torso raised itself from the ground in accordance to the knight's hand movements; he had become a mere puppet on his enemy's strings.

"Don't take all the fun for yourself, Gawain," Iseo said, but her commander silenced her complaint with minimal gesture.

"You'll get your fair share," Gawain said before turning back to the victim caught in the net of his magical ability. He kneeled down to meet Gaius at eyelevel. "Now, Gaius, your presence creates quite the problem for us. We are all aware that Mordred's plans won't be met with open ears across Britannia. Everyone daring enough to do something that will truly change and better the lives of millions has faced this blind defiance. Why change when the wars over land and magic suit their simple minds so damn well? So, tell me, Gaius, does Merlin know that you're here?"

"No." Gaius voice was hollow, his answer nearly inaudible.

"Excellent, you've just signed your own death sentence."

Gawain stood up, and Gaius slumped to the ground. Fear ate into her heart, and Katrina tried once more to escape Ronal's grip. She conjured her wings and knocked him back, desperate to reach Gaius. Her freedom hardly lasted a heartbeat before she found herself in Gawain's stranglehold. He smacked her to the floor, and she tasted blood. Her wings disappeared. Gawain's boot on her shoulder buried her cheek deeper into the dust. She fought to breathe in, but her lungs clenched tighter without the relief of air.

Gaius returned to his feet, shaking and unsteady, freed from Gawain's control. He raised his hand towards Gawain in another opening of a spell.

Gawain was faster; Gaius' head snapped backwards, joints grinding, muscles tearing, arms spasming in a desperate attempt to break the invisible hand of magic around his neck. But he didn't back down. The pressure on Katrina's shoulder increased as Gawain's control over Gaius was slipping out of his hands.

Then, Gaius' efforts were put to an end. His muscles released and his eyes became unfocused. Endlessly blue past the shadows in her vision.

Katrina screamed.

Iseo's halberd buried itself into the flesh of Gaius' shoulder. Past the point where the spike expanded into the axe blade.

* * *

Gaius had never been one to disappear without a word, without a trace, and Merlin had begun to worry from the moment she had been unable to find him hunched over the book he had been reading in her laboratory. At first, she told herself that he was visiting Camelot's royal library and had simply forgotten to leave behind a note. Not that it was like Gaius to forget anything either.

Then, he didn't return in the evening. Or the next morning. And for as skilled in the magic arts as she was, Merlin failed to track down his location. Her multiple attempts of using _sumetumaro nokote_ proved a waste of time as did her excursions to the places Gaius visited most often. A source of magic powerful enough might have shielded his presence from her, and Merlin hoped that such was the case. The other explanation unsettled her far more.

Escanor had stopped by once to ask if she wanted to join their fellow Sins who had arrived the day before in preparation for Arthur's funeral. Merlin had sent him away without an explanation. Alas, the Captain was stubborn to no end, especially whenever his comrades were eating their worries into themselves, and dragged her to the nearest tavern to meet up with the others. And after tedious questioning, Merlin revealed that Gaius had vanished.

Elizabeth, King, and Diane were quick to show their support.

"We'll go look for him together then. He couldn't have gone too far, right?" Diane said, and her words drew forward nods from all across the table. Merlin felt no need to mention that, technically, Gaius could teleport himself to the other end of Britannia in a matter of moments.

"He probably just dug into another book and lost track of time," Ban said. His attempt to lighten the mood caused King to scowl.

"Just try to be serious for once, any number of things could've happened to him," he said. "He's still a child, even younger than Ivy and Lance…" Merlin couldn't bear to look at him.

The Captain clapped his hands together in an attempt to settle the matter for good. "All seven of us should be able to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time. If he's still in the city, we'll find him."

"No." Meliodas looked up to Merlin, and his determination made room for irritation. "You should attend Arthur's funeral as promised. Especially you, Captain; Mordred would want to have you there. I will rejoin you shortly."

"Are you sure, Sis-sis?" Elizabeth asked and put a supportive hand on top of Merlin's, only for the latter to pull back.

"Certainly. You'll only stand in my way." Judging from their expressions, she had failed to convince any of them. The drawback of being too close to others; Merlin's poker face couldn't fool them anymore.

"Fine then, your call."

"But Captain!" King and Diane burst out, but Meliodas raised a hand before they had the chance to argue further.

"This is Merlin's responsibility," he said, "and we've all agreed not to pry into each other's Sins or any other problem that's on our minds. That rule still stands." Meliodas turned to catch Merlin's gaze. "Just know that we're here for you in case you need help."

Merlin nodded and left her seat without another word. But she didn't make it further than the other side of the tavern door before Escanor caught up to her, his blue eyes clouded in genuine worry.

"Please, let me help, Merlin," he said. "I might not understand how much he means to you, but I don't want to see you hurt as you are now. You are always strong and wise and confident, but that doesn't mean you have to carry your burdens alone. We know each other better than that, don't you think?"

Merlin smiled a sad smile and wondered when Escanor had become so confident around her. "You have every right to despise me for my selfish actions. Did you ever regret that I brought you back?"

"Not for one moment."

Merlin hated his earnest beam, and she hated herself for clinging onto it for as long as she did. Nothing could be done. She was doomed to repeat her mistakes until the universe finally stopped her. All she could do was beg that Gaius or Escanor wouldn't pay the price for her selfishness.

"You are Camelot's most respected Holy Knight," Merlin said, her words, sympathetic as they might sound, enough to have him pull back. "People will undoubtedly start asking questions if you stayed away from the king's funeral. As the Captain said, Gaius is my responsibility."

It hurt to push him away, and leave him alone and helpless in front of the tavern, but Merlin had other worries on her mind. Additional emotional distress would only detract from her search, and she couldn't afford to lose Gaius.

Not a second time.

* * *

– Eleven years before the Fall –

Merlin had just finished reorganizing her personal scriptures – a long overdue task – and used the last hour of daylight for a short walk to clear her thoughts. Ideally, she would be able to make some theoretical process on the cylinder able to store magic for an indefinite amount of time she had been puzzling her head over for weeks.

Outside of her laboratory, a group of street kids played with a tattered leather ball, much to the disdain of a pair of nobles traversing the plaza. Some of the children looked barely old enough to walk, not to mention fend for themselves. Merlin decided she would address the issue the next time she would visit the palace to see Arthur, regardless of how many problems he might have on his plate at the moment. And heaven knew Arthur always had a plethora of problems on his plate.

Her short stroll through the city streets might not have given her the breakthrough she had hoped for, but Merlin quickly forgot about her studies in the face of one of the children from before sitting on the doorsteps of her lab. The boy couldn't be older than four, too young to be a war orphan. His dark hair and thin, malnourished features made him another face in the crowd of thousand same-aged children in the capital.

"Now, shouldn't children your age be fast asleep this late in the evening?" Merlin asked the boy. He stared up at her with wide doe eyes.

"You do know that I can turn you into a toad if I feel like it and if you keep blocking my doorway?"

Merlin hadn't thought it possible, but his eyes went even rounder and wider. "You can do something like that?" He lisped a bit while speaking and struggled with articulating the 'th'; it sounded more like an 'f'.

"Certainly."

Since the boy refused to budge and kept looking at her in expectation of a display of the magic she had promised, Merlin reevaluated her strategy. With a mere flick of her wrist, she directed the leather ball from where it laid abandoned on the plaza into the boy's lap. His eyes nearly popped out of their sockets as he inspected the plaything in his hands. Then he started to giggle.

And Merlin couldn't help but smile.

"You wouldn't happen to have a name so that I will know which one of my plentiful toads is you?" she asked.

He mumbled a mess of syllables that might have passed for a name, but the word was hopelessly intangible. Merlin sighed. "I suppose you might show more promising results after you've had something to eat. Though I must warn you, cooking is not a craft I perform on a regular basis, so the results may vary."

After Merlin handed him the remains of the fruit loaf she had stored in the depths of her stowage – not her own work but rather the outcome of Elaine's most recent attempt at getting Lancelot to bake when Merlin had visited them two days ago –, she found out that the boy's name was Gaius. When Merlin brought up the topic of his parents, he fell quiet and studied the crumbs on his plate with a vacant expression. Based on his bony statue, Merlin deducted that they had died a few weeks prior, and Gaius had been forced to live on the street since then.

Merlin offered him to stay, at first for the night only but soon without time limitation.

He loved everything she showed him. The basic magic trickery she performed, the heavy volumes in her shelves he couldn't read; he soaked up every word she said like a bottomless hole with a pure, honest joy. And without realizing it, Gaius became the center of Merlin's life.

He gaped in awe at her after she finished reading the page to him. "Can you do this spell too? Make a tree out of a seed in only ten seconds?" Gaius asked and pointed at the oversized textbook in his arms.

"I am certain I can do it in less than three," Merlin answered. The warmth of a smile spread across her face. "Would you like to try it out right now?"

His grin widened and he nodded in a lovely overacted fashion.

She had never had children of her own and had never seen the desire for one either. When she had stopped the aging process of her body with «Infinity», she had thereby forever given up the opportunity to carry a child. She could watch the physical changes of motherhood in other women, had seen the effect on some of her closest friends, but never hoped to experience the same. And for the longest time, Merlin had considered this a small price to pay in exchange for infinite time to discover all the mysteries Britannia had to offer.

This new, unparalleled feeling of adoration and love that controlled her decisions both enlivened and frightened her. For the first time, something, _someone_ could rob her of her rationality, could make her do unspeakable things and allow unspeakable things to happen. She had always had her sense of justice to rely on. But when Gaius was involved, her sense of right and wrong fell silent.

He bobbed back and forth on his toes and studied the night sky in search for one of the constellations displayed in the book sprawled on the merlon in front of him. With the exception of Camelot's palace, no other building offered a better view at the stars than the top of Merlin's laboratory. This benefit of her home had come in handy before, but if this had been the first night Merlin stood atop the tower, the observation deck would have still been worth the hassle for Gaius' expression alone.

"This one, this one!" He pointed first at the constellation and then at its counterimage in the book. "What does it say?"

Merlin moved the small oil lamp closer to read the inscription underneath the ink drawing. "The White Stag. It can best be observed in the early weeks of fall."

"What's the White Stag like? Why were the stars named like this?"

"You see, Gaius, the White Stag is an old human folktale, a legend founded on little more than the imagination of humans. It is said that whoever hunts down such a creature will be granted immortality. Knights and adventurers have searched for the White Stag for a long time, but no one succeeded."

"Why do humans want to be immortal?"

The stars reflected in Gaius' eyes, the spark of youth and awe and everything she hadn't felt in centuries. Merlin hesitated to answer and reached out to push a lose strand of hair behind his ear. "We all want to leave a mark on this world. We strive for the unknown, the unexplored for a chance to create something that will outlive us and that will be remembered. And those with the strongest desire to create something worthwhile are scared to leave this world before they found the answers to their questions. When in reality, we just fail to see what we already have."

Gaius pondered for a while, but the full scale of her words could not divert his interest from the volume on astronomy for long. "There must be at least one thousand stars in this book. And I'm gonna learn all their names and the stories behind them!"

Merlin smiled and heaved him up to sit on the merlon, secured by her arms. "You will, dear. With enough time, you will."

Gaius was the most lively and curious child Merlin had met, a star of optimism in this war-ridden world.

He was also terminally ill.

The Purgatory Plague was far from uncommon in Camelot these days; it had become the primary source of death after the war had ended. The uneducated commoner liked to refer to the disease as a final act of vengeance the Demon Clan brought upon the world after their defeat in the Holy War. Nonsense. Nevertheless, children died under the creeping illness' greedy fangs every single day, and though Merlin had tried to help Arthur minimize the casualties, her research hadn't brought forth any successes. Healing was a magic reserved for Druids and members of the Goddess Clan – and no matter how often she had tapped into its secrets in the past, Merlin had never overcome this barrier.

And because of her inabilities, she had to watch Gaius be consumed by this disease that she knew no way to stop.

"Why d'you look so sad, Merlin?" he asked, his voice hoarse from coughing too often.

"I have a great many things on my mind, dear. And some of them are quite sad. Your mind is still young, so you shouldn't be bothered with any of it. Do you understand this?"

Gaius nodded and tucked at her sleeve. "When can we go outside to see our tree again? I want to go, Merlin, plea–" The rest of his words was cut short by another wave of coughing that shook his small form.

Merlin was running out of option, was running out of time. Nothing she tried helped Gaius defeat the sickness, and he grew feebler as the days ticked down to the inevitable date where his weakened body could uphold the fight no more. And still, he never forgot to smile, as though he felt obligated to balance out the tears she never allowed him to see.

"I want to read like you," Gaius declared, his body tucked under three blankets. He couldn't stop shivering. "Not just look at the pictures of your books. I want to understand what they say, and I want to learn all their spells."

"You will, Gaius, with some time you will learn all of them," Merlin said and put a hand on his forehead to brush away a few strands of thin black hair. "You should try to get some rest. Tomorrow we can start to teach you how to read. Just… one letter at a time."

Gaius coughed, and all Merlin could do was hold his hand until the assault eased. The dull haze of exhaustion had replaced the light in his brown eyes as he looked up at her. "Okay. And then I'll learn how to turn people into toads."

"I can't await the toad infestation we will have by the end of the month."

As Gaius drifted into sleep, Merlin kneeled by his bedside and watched the single candle in the room flicker and wither away. The wax burned down to the stand by the darkest hours of night.

Three months after Gaius had first sat on Merlin's doorsteps, he was dead.

She had made preparations for this case, had stayed the nights awake, all to find a method, a spell, an incantation that could bring him back if the worst were to happen. Arthur had told her once that the peace he strove towards was meant for his children, so that they might never face the horrors of war that had controlled the early years of his life. He was ready to cross every necessary boundary.

And Merlin would do the same.

To bring Gaius back to the world of the living, her options were twofold, one as unethical as the other, both of them fabricated by her broken mind in the solemnness of the night. What she was about to do would have ramifications and might cost her dearly, she knew that. But no one would bat an eye if she altered the fate of one boy who had had no one in this world but her. No one would know. How weak her time with the Sins, with Arthur, with Gaius had made her, too weak to let go, too weak to move on.

Merlin fell back on the Druid spell «Enslavement of the Dead» that she had made alterations to so that the dead in question would be bound to an object rather than a person. It was wrong to use this spell, cruel even, and if King were to find out, Merlin doubted that he would forgive her. She might forever cage Gaius' soul in a dying body.

Merlin knew all of this – but she proceeded.

As soon as the ancient words of the Druid Clan had passed her lips and the light was swallowed by the pendant around his neck, Gaius opened his eyes. Blue had submerged the warm brown. He looked at her with the distant apprehension with which one would regard a stranger.

Due to Merlin's selfish actions, the boy she held so dear had become a blank slate. Not a different person but rather no person at all, with his previous memories wiped clean. A four-year-old with a dead soul.

Over time, Gaius adjusted to the body that was foreign to him, and his mind mended itself into a state that could almost pass as human. But emotions remained incomprehensible and unattainable to him as he grew older, and Merlin had long given up hope that he would retrieve his past joy.

From time to time, a shadow of his former self befell him when he discovered a particularly intriguing mystery or when Merlin surprised him with a slice of fruit loaf.

But his laugh only existed in the past. And in her weakest moments, Merlin returned to those days, the three month of bittersweet joy she could not let go, to hear it again.

* * *

_Let go, give up, your life isn't yours, hasn't been yours for so long, let go and DIE!_

Gaius had expected to feel pain. Had expected to feel the flood of horror at the sight of his body pierced by Iseo's weapon. But neither was the case. There was only numbness in his muscles as well as his mind as he stumbled. Blood soaked his clothes, and its metallic taste lingered in the back of his throat. His knees buckled under him, no longer able to receive the commands his brain was screaming at them.

Katrina's voice sounded distant; he had fallen to deep.

Gaius gave in to the heaviness of his eyelids. It was easier this way. To continue the battle was tiring and took too much from him, and letting it all slip away seemed like a welcoming path to follow. If he gave up, maybe the cold would retreat. The candle had burned down so far, and Merlin still sat there, too grief-stricken to cry.

He regretted to never have asked her to teach him how to read and pressing every letter into his brain on his own. She had sounded so genuine when she had offered to teach him…

Gaius emerged from the mist of half-death, and his eyes flung open. He didn't want to die, in spite of what the voice of weakness whispered into his ears, he wanted to live. He had never wanted anything this badly.

Despite the pain in his lungs and in his shoulder, Gaius pushed himself to rest on his elbows and reached for the pendant around his neck. Blue light pulsated from the engravings in sync with his heartbeat. The intensity wavered while counting down the beats his heart had to spare before it would shut down from the expiration of oxygen circulating his body.

Images of unknown origin floated in his head, of a childhood he didn't remember, of a happiness not quite his own, but all of it tied back to the piece of silverware that he had owned for as long as he could recall. His life was tied to it. The pendant had never been a simple lucky charm or an object of remembrance. It was one of Merlin's magical items. The same that had saved Gaius' life before.

While holding onto the pendant so intensely it hurt, he returned to his feet. Iseo fell a step backwards, shocked to see him standing, whereas Gawain raised his hand in the move that proceeded his magical ability, «The Puppet Master». But this time, Gaius acted beforehand.

"_Atemoto dureshi_!" he shouted at the top of his lungs, and the will to survive granted him strength where he had been missing it before.

The library froze to a rigid painting, everyone except Gaius caught mid-motion. Without the supporting effect of the Time Crystal at his disposal, the time-manipulating spell ate up Gaius' magical reserves quicker than his stumbling heartbeat. But the fire of determination, fueled by these strange memories that part of him knew to be his own, allowed him to uphold the stream of magic, and he staggered to were Katrina was lying on the ground. Her eyes remained in their state of shock and fear as Gaius dragged her away from Gawain; the effect of _atemoto dureshi_ had befallen her as it had the Holy Knights.

He didn't make it into the nearest aisle of bookshelves before his physical strength collapsed, and his lungs filled with blood instead of air. But he still had some magical energy left to count on.

"_Lokshi marote_," Gaius mustered, and with his next shaky breath, he lifted the time manipulation spell. "_Dukario umaro_."

In the same instance that Katrina stirred, the blue aura of Gaius' shield spell began to waver in the air to form a barrier between them and the Holy Knights who needed time to overcome their bewilderment. But it was only a matter of time before they would charge.

"Gaius!" Katrina shrieked, and the shrill sound momentarily yanked him out of his state of blood-loss-infused delirium. She wrapped her arms around him. "How did you get us free? You were hurt so badly…"

Katrina pulled back as she realized that Gaius had gone rigid under her touch. She hadn't meant to hurt him, Gaius knew that, but his injury ached whenever she made a move and brushed over the torn flesh. Dismayed, Katrina stared at the expanding patch of dark liquid on his shirt, visible even against the black fabric. Her dress was stained by crimson as well.

The dull sound of metal on the magic barrier, roused Katrina out of her staring, and she took a mere second to take in her surroundings. The shield pulsated under the fire of Iseo's brunt attacks, about to collapse and leave them at the mercy of the enemy. Gaius' eyes hurt from squinting them in a frantic attempt to get them to focus, and his head felt dizzy.

"Gaius, please, you have to stay focused, just a moment longer." For as pleading as Katrina's words sounded, her expression was composed, the uncertainty banned to a place far behind her emerald eyes.

She extended her palm to hover a hair's width from Gaius' battered and bloody skin, and warmth spread through his body as her healing magic knitted the tissue back together, reassembled muscles, and contained his blood flow back inside its streams. A dull pain remained when he shifted his severed clavicle, but Katrina's reserves were as limited as his own, and any further attempts to heal the damage would cost them precious time.

Gaius locked eyes with Katrina for a moment before climbing to his feet. She followed suit. While her magic had healed his body, the spell hadn't reached as far as refilling his magic energy, and the longer he upheld the barrier protecting them against Iseo's barrage, the drier and more used up he felt. But that was acceptable. He would continue to protect Katrina's and his own life.

To his surprise, Katrina stepped past him, closer to where Ronal had joined his sister in assaulting the magical barrier that swayed with each hit. "Can you dispel the barrier?" she asked, and Gaius answered with a weak nod. "On the count of three then. One…"

Gawain drew his sword, and his cold eyes jumped between Gaius and Katrina, ready to trap them with his magical ability as soon as the shield would disperse.

"Two."

Iseo's halberd and Ronal's flanged mace crashed against the barrier, and Gaius recoiled as the strike drew out more of his energy to sustain the shield.

"Three!"

The barrier ceased to exist as Gaius cut the stream of magic, leaving them without protection or cover. Triumph flashed in Gawain's eyes.

But only for a second.

"«DIVINE HELLFIRE»!"

Magic power exploded onto the fray, and its shockwaves rippled over Gaius' skin to make it crawl. Heat kissed his face to drive away the cold in his bones, a beautiful, deadly, heavenly heat. The empty space between them and their opponents was consumed by the dark flames of purgatory magic, flickering to taste the dust-ridden wood that surrounded it, eager to consume. Only that the fire wasn't uncontrolled in its rage as Gaius had expected but was reigned by Katrina's willpower, who kept the white tips of from spreading and stilling their hunger.

"Don't you two _dare_ retreat," Gawain ordered his fellows from behind the inferno where Gaius could barely make out his silhouette. "Don't you see? This is merely for show. The girl won't risk setting the entire place on fire."

"Not yet," Katrina said while taking a hold of Gaius' hand who was still mesmerized by the magic power he had never seen Katrina use in such fashion.

She dragged him back the way they had taken through the library, and as soon as she turned her back on the tornado of purple and white flames, the fire crackled greedily, and the sound of wood being split and eaten by fire followed them as Gaius and Katrina picked up speed.

"I'm sorry about all these texts you won't be able to read," Katrina said. The Holy Knights' shouts grew in urgency, but the roaring fire soon overshadowed them. If they came to their senses, they would make haste and escape through one of the other tunnels before the smoke rendered them immovable.

"It hardly matters," Gaius said even though the faint sting of regret did pierce him at the thought of the plethora of textbooks he had held at his fingertips. "I already know where Mordred will be going next and what he plans to find there."

He hadn't realized it at the time, but the polarizing study on the Fairy Clan he had tapped into before Gawain had arrived at the scene had shown the exact page with the information Mordred had ordered his men to obtain. An untouched source of magic forgotten for three thousand years, the key Mordred needed to overcome foes as formidable as the Seven Deadly Sins. His plan never relied on manpower – he required magic energy to equip the forces he did have.

Katrina tripped but caught herself before she fell. "You mean there is another thing Mordred needs for The Fall to happen? And we can take it from him without the need to confront him? We won't need to kill him?"

"If my assessment is correct, yes," Gaius answered. "Though we have to assume that, at this point, Mordred has access to this information as well."

"Where are we going then?"

"To Avalon."

And with luck, they would arrive there before Mordred would and prevent unnecessary bloodshed. In case of the opposite coming to pass, Gaius doubted that they would be able to overcome Mordred's forces. But he would stand up to the man who had ordered the murder of his mentor, regardless of the odds. To live and to protect those who mattered to him.

One look at Katrina confirmed that she would do the same.

* * *

**(A/N)** I feel like I need to reiterate that I wrote the the first draft of this chapter long before the Chaos arc happened, which is why Merlin's character is a little different from how we've last seen her in the manga. I wanted to explore Merlin's flawed but human nature as well as her strong focus on the individual as supposed to the collective, but I realize that this representation might be jarring for some considering the Chaos arc. Nevertheless, this is probably my favorite chapter.


	22. The Springs of Avalon

The primary attribute Lance would describe Avalon with was misty.

Thick layers of fog obscured sight in all directions, and Lance had to rely on his ears more so than his eyes if he wanted to stick around the clacking of hooves from Errin's horse and Ivy's Giant steps. But even sound was muffled by the cotton-like wafts. A ghostly ocean of silence.

The change in their surroundings had come awfully sudden too. One moment they had been traversing the grassy plains to the north-west of Camelot's capital under the bright morning sun, and the next they had found themselves amidst a sea of mist pressing down on their skin and senses. And it didn't seem to be getting less foggy any time soon.

Avalon consistent of a chain of lakes and smaller bodies of water strung on the river Avon and its sidearms like pearls on a thread. These lakes were often fed by a multitude of springs, some of them boiling with the heat hidden within the deep layers of the earth. And while the springs explained the fogginess plaguing this place, the knowledge failed to make Lance enjoy his stay more.

The only upside to these horrendous weather conditions was that Mordred wouldn't know them approaching until they would be stepping on his toes. Not that the opposite wasn't as likely to happen.

But not only the battlefield conditions had Lance on edge, the numbers had too. As Errin had informed him and Ivy, Mordred had sent three of his men to Belialuin – where they would hopefully _not_ run into Katrina and Gaius. Further subtracting Mark and that grumpy female knight from yesterday evening left five Knights of the Round Table as well as Nashtar and Mordred themselves on the board. And so, the odds stood three against seven. Lovely.

At this point, Lance had lost his sense of direction in its entirety, and he could neither tell how long they had been wandering through the mist nor whether they had stayed on a straight path. His horse buckled as one of its legs found the muddy bank of another pool of water, and Lance lost his balance. He only saved himself an unwanted bath by clawing his hands into the leather of the saddle.

"Damn it," he cursed under his breath. Cold sweat ran down his forehead.

Because the frightened animal seemed incapable of freeing itself, Lance wobbly dismounted his horse and pulled the stuck leg out of its murky prison. With a defeated scowl, he let go of the reigns to take on the rest of the way on foot. Considering the rate at which they had crept forward, it didn't make much of a difference.

Ivy muffled a shriek as she lost her footing in another one of the traitorous springs. No other sound broke the silence.

Little by little, the mist lifted, and Lance's field of vision expanded one foot every minute they went on as the most volatile of mist trails dispersed under the warmth of the climbing sun. He allowed his shoulders to slack when his feet reappeared. Winding his way through uneven banks overgrown with reed and the puddles that surrounded them proved less of a challenge, but the better visibility also allowed him to notice a detail that turned over his stomach.

Hoof prints. Hoof prints all around, carved deep enough into the mud to suggest that their owners had been armored. The clear outlines couldn't be old. Ivy had picked up on the detail as well and sent him an uneasy glance that he could only repay with an equally distressed look. But they both followed Errin without a word as she pressed onward with cold perseverance.

At long last, the lake banks gave way to sturdier ground. Lance's sigh of relief died in his throat as the wafts of mist recoiled to reveal what their ghostly hands had hidden away. A massive tree towered in front of him, and its leafless branches reached up high to pierce the heavens themselves. The bark with its patchwork of white and washed-out grey seemed made out of stone rather than wood, a fossilized monument of a bygone era. The tree might have stood here since the inception of Britannia itself. A long time ago, it had to have been an unparalleled sight to behold, similar to the sense of insignificance the Sacred Tree evoked in the hearts of those who stood at its feet. But nothing sacred had remained, only a sickening pressure at the back of Lance's skull when he studied the countless holes and chasms leading inside and below the tree.

"It's been dead for centuries," Ivy whispered.

Errin, who had meanwhile climbed from her horse to allow the animal to flee to more pleasant sights, approached the tree. "Mordred should have passed this place already."

Lance failed to shake the weight from his chest, unease born from the instinctual suspicion that they were not alone in this forgotten sanctuary. While the mist might have cleared to an extent, his visual sense was no less limited in what he could make out beyond the small patch of land that had once fed the stone tree.

"The ground here is warm," Ivy said and startled Lance, who had paid more attention to the shadows out of view than his immediate surroundings. But he could feel the heat seep through his boots. The hairs on his arms stood up in alarm, and his throat dried out.

"Maybe it's an underground spring below the roots of the tree," he suggested. His voice sounded raspy in his ears. "Something down there is giving me the creeps."

Ivy nodded. "This must be what Mordred is after."

Errin gestured for Lance to follow her towards one of the holes in the tree and for Ivy to stand guard. As his apprehension reached new heights, Lance pulled one of his swords from his back. The leather-wrapped hilt gave him a semblance of comfort. Tiny droplets of water condensed on the cold surface of the blade.

Ivy shifted. Errin unsheathed her own weapon.

Three heads snapped to the left when the sound of splashing water signaled a new arrival. Metal clung, horses snorted, and out of the mist, three knights on horseback emerged. They didn't bother with strategy and dashed forward to catch the trio before they had a chance to parry the ambush.

Lance duck away from Eugenius' wide swing and used the momentum to fall into a roll that brought him into the direct path of Bryanor's horse. With a quick slash lacking both windup and strength, Lance gazed the front legs of the mount above its shin armor. The animal crashed to the ground with a pained squeal.

With grim resolve on his face, Bryanor rose from behind the remains of his horse and ended the animal's suffering with a slash of his dagger.

Lance shifted his stance sideways to pose a smaller target. He had fought his opponent before, way back when Nashtar had first pursued them at the beginning of their journey, and he had only come out on top by taking irresponsible risks. But he, unlike Bryanor, could draw from the experience of that fight.

In a predictable opening move, Bryanor threw his dagger at Lance and dashed right after. Lance evaded the projectile and met Bryanor's follow-up strike with one of his own weapons. As metal clashed, Lance brought his left-hand sword forward to his opponent's exposed side. Bryanor sidestepped and tried retaliating with a kick to Lance's knee that he avoided impact with by retreating a handful of feet.

With his heightened perception due to «Focus», Lance predicted Bryanor's overhead swing and jumped out of reach before minimizing the space between them while Bryanor was still caught in the momentum of his last strike. He narrowly deflected Lance's two-hit combo with the cross-guard of his sword, and pushed Lance back using his higher body strength. The renewed opening allowed both of them a moment to breathe.

Bryanor was a good swordsman, capable of shattering the defenses of his opponents, especially when fighting on horseback, but he lacked both the precision and the finesse necessary to counter unpredictable attack patterns. And as an added bonus, Bryanor only possessed fighting experience against foes with one weapon, most of them righthanded.

Lance charged before Bryanor could capitalize on the wider range of his weapon, and acted out a lengthy chain of fast thrusts he had adapted when training with Percival. Under the rapid-fire bombardment, Bryanor fell back into instinctual defense patterns to hinder Lance from striking at the openings in his armor. But these patterns had been designed with the intent of blocking _one_ weapon.

Bryanor raised his sword an inch too high to stop Lance's stab at his neck, and Lance punished the mistake by burying his additional sword into the unarmored flesh of his opponent's hip. Surprise flashed in Bryanor's eyes. The wound wasn't severe enough to claim his life, but it was enough to bring about his defeat.

But as Lance drew back his sword, the blade became entangled in the salient lower end of Bryanor's torso plate, and Lance failed to recover from the delayed response in time. The desperate jab lacked most of the intended force but cut into the muscles of Lance's forearm regardless, and a pained outcry escaped his lips. The sword further tore at the damaged tissue as Bryanor's grip around his weapon became loose, and the sword dropped to the ground.

The fingers of his left hand went numb. Lance stumbled backwards, and his second sword disappeared under Bryanor as the man tumbled over. He would survive. But the cost of Lance's victory was significant. Hot blood ran down his arm, the sleeve of his tunic long soaked beyond repair.

He had been so entangled in his duel with Bryanor that he had lost sight of the others; they had to have fallen back far enough to hide within the mist. Or maybe the Holy Knights had planned to separate them with their brash charge all along.

To his right, the constant clangs of swords clashing signaled that Errin had to be engaged in a fight of her own. And from his other side, the sound of earth manipulation disrupted the silence. Lance bit his lips, and his eyes shot back and forth between the two places of combat. Help Ivy or help Errin. His left arm throbbed, and he continued to waste precious seconds, seconds that could decide who would see the end of the battle. Lance shot a regretful look in Errin's direction and hurried the other way.

Ivy was on her knees when he reached her, forced into a pool of shallow water by the Holy Knights Eugenius and Ragnell. The latter hadn't been part of the initial ambush but had to have joined the fight later on to feed her sick passion for bloodshed. All the more likely that Mordred was only waiting to play his cards out of sight.

As he noticed Lance's presence, Eugenius left the struggling Ivy to his partner and closed in on the new threat. This was bad. Eugenius would be a much tougher nut to crack than Bryanor, not least thanks to Lance's injury. He braced himself.

Eugenius came rushing at him with a speed that offered Lance no chance to process the attack, even though «Focus» should have enabled him to react in time. The spiked iron ball of his opponent's flail struck Lance's sword with enough force to bend the light-weighted blade, and he had to side-step to avoid injury through his own weapon.

"You should have stood down when you had the chance to," Eugenius growled. Determination vibrated from every fiber of his being.

With a minimal movement of his wrist, he flicked the morning star at the end of his flail forward and struck the ground where Lance had been standing a second before. The chain connecting the two sections of Eugenius' weapon rattled as he performed a string of attacks that was impossible to predict. Lance fell into a desperate rather than strategic retreat. He had to think and _fast_ if he wanted to overcome the number of obstacles piling up against him.

One of Lance's biggest advantages – next to his advanced healing – was his ability to strike at his opponents from two angles and in patterns unknown to most of them. Combined with his speed bonus, he could hold his own in a duel well enough. But the ridiculous range of Eugenius' flail robbed him of all these benefits. And because additional players swarmed the field, all partied against him, Lance couldn't risk further injuries either. Ivy and Errin counted on him.

The morning star crashed to the ground inches away from his toes, and Lance was again forced to shuffle backwards; on uneven terrain such as this, he was in constant danger of losing his balance.

His feet tasted the cool of a puddle through the leather of his boots, but the expected splashing sound was drowned out by the earth bending and twisting as Ivy sent a slew of rocks against her attacker.

Lance _didn't _back away on purpose as Eugenius aimed another strike against him and instead ate up the force with the blunt side of his sword. The metal protested with a shriek, and waves of pain rippled through Lance's muscles as he forced them to withstand the pressure.

Convinced that his opponent had made a life-ending mistake, Eugenius struck again, this time overhead, in an attempt to crush Lance's skull. But this time, Lance had foreseen the trajectory of the metal ball, and he leapt out of the way by a hair's width. The morning star crashed into the puddle around Lance's feet; water fountains sprayed into the air and confused Eugenius' sight for a moment. Enough time for Lance to thrust forward and land a hit against his opponent's wrist. The cursed flail dropped into the water.

Lance raised the tip of his sword to Eugenius chin. They stared at one another, both out of breath and slow to comprehend the outcome of their duel. Scarlet meet icy blue. Eugenius was only a handful of years older than Lance, his face still possessed the roundness of youth.

"I guess it's now my turn to tell you to stand down," Lance said and kicked Eugenius' weapon deeper into the mud of the puddle.

Then he turned on his heels to rejoin Ivy.

Her breath was uneven when he reached her side, and muddy water stained her skirt and leggings. A cut above her eyebrows disfigured her face, and her attempts at keeping the blood from her eyes had further strained the wound. But she was still standing. That was all that mattered.

"Are you okay?" she asked with a look at his limp arm.

Lance dismissed her worry with a handwave. "Nothing that won't be healed in a day. Were Eugenius and Ragnell the only ones ganging up on you?"

"Ragnell showed up after about a minute or so. She was with that old geezer, but he went ahead, probably to get to Errin. No sign of Mordred or Nashtar."

Meaning that Errin was facing at least two opponents at once.

Lance felt sick. And not due to blood loss. "Let's go back to Errin. Not to doubt her fighting skills, but she might need our help."

Ivy nodded and fell into pace with Lance. Each of her steps accounted for at least ten of his.

Bryanor had disappeared when they returned to the patch of dry land at the tree's foot; Lance hadn't nearly incapacitated him for as long as he had hoped. In his place, Errin stood in the tree's shadow, cut off from support by Orland and Coel. She looked bad. Blood ran down the side of her head, and she relied too heavily on her left leg for balance. The sickness returned. All over again, he failed to help, all he did was watch and wait for someone else to end the cruelty. Until it was too late.

Lance tried to pick up his second sword, that Bryanor had left behind in his retreat, but the fingers of his left hand refused to answer his will. The prickling told him that his advanced healing was working to repair the damage, but it would take another minute before he would be able to hold anything. He forced his lungs to pull in another set of air.

The remaining knights emerged from the mist barriers all at once, aligned to corner the smaller group between them and the front of Orland and Coel with Errin locked outside the circle. Lance grit his teeth as he saw Eugenius among the newcomers, his weapon once more raised against him.

And from the depths of the tree itself emerged Mordred and Nashtar. The presence that radiated from them was sickening, perverted, too much power chained to one being. Mordred raised his hands, and like a single man, the Knights of the Round Table stopped their advancements.

"I understand you know why I have come here," Mordred addressed Lance and Ivy. "I don't want to harm you, but I've made my peace with what I must do. What only I am willing to do."

"Quit the high talk," Lance said. "We know you're a power-hungry maniac, and that you want to use the magic that lies here to kill the Sins."

He needed to hold onto that thought. What Mordred planned to do was unjust, it was the image of evil Lance had sworn to stop when he had started his training as a Holy Knight. If he admitted for even a second that the end justified the means, he would lose the fight on the spot. Everything would have been for nothing.

Mordred took the insult without a shift in expression. "Every time a living being dies, the magic that used to flow through its veins is set free. And for millennia, this simple rule of nature has motivated those with power to claim the magic of their contemporaries. Wars have been fought because these people sought for more than they already had, and the weak have suffered the consequences. The Sins hold the world at their fingertips. Even if all their power won't corrupt them, their mere existence prevents change. You must understand why they are a necessary sacrifice for peace."

"All I understand is that you plan to commit murder," Ivy said with a stone-cold face. "I won't let you get away with it. Not this time."

Lance dropped to the ground in prediction of Ivy's next move. The earth erupted, spikes and pillars reached for the sky, and the sounds of combat broke out anew. Still on his knees, he fetched his second sword with trembling fingers and prepared himself for the battle.

* * *

He still believed to be in the right. He still believed that his motives were noble and that his ambition justified any crime, no matter how horrific. _Necessary sacrifice_.

Ivy had yet to decide whether this made her hate him more or just a little less. But she refused to stand aside and watch him continue down the path he thought so highly of.

One thought and the earth exploded in accordance to her will; Mordred's expression turned grim before he disappeared behind a cloud of rubble. His Holy Knights scattered in all directions to save themselves from the earth manipulation, some of them bold enough to counter Ivy's attack with one of their own. Fireballs flew past her head, blindly thrown by Orland and followed by Coel's «Iron Rain». Ivy deflected the barrage of metal shards with Gideon, but her movements were too slow, and a handful of them found their way past her defensive pattern; in her human form, the damage would have been severe enough to cut the fight short, but the stings only fueled her anger.

A battery of rocks rose from the earth and rushed forward to meet Coel and Ragnell, directed by Ivy's gesture; that should buy her a couple seconds to breathe.

Lance was engaged in a cross duel with Bryanor and Eugenius, in which the latter only dealt out blows in a halfhearted manner. His reserve earned him a hit from Gideon that knocked him out cold. Errin meanwhile was trading blows with Nashtar, and the struggle to counter her opponent's chain of attacks carved deep lines into her face.

But Ivy couldn't pass attention to aid her, as another fireball, ten times larger than the previous one, headed her way, the magic spell without a doubt enhanced by Mordred's «Full Potential». She dropped to one knee, and the water within the mist wafts condensed as the heat exploded above her head. Her ears were ringing, and blood from her forehead threatened to obscure her view. Before she had the chance to recover, Ragnell jumped at her, a grin of sick satisfaction on her face – only for her form to dissolve as Ivy struck her with Gideon's hilt.

In the same instance, Ivy felt a sharp sting of pain in her lower leg as Ragnell – the real one – buried her sword into Ivy's flesh. She stumbled but managed to reclaim her balance and drive Ragnell away with a distortion of the earth's surface beneath her feet.

"Ivy!" She looked down to see that Lance had freed himself from Bryanor. But the break wouldn't last long, as he and Ragnell prepared to corner him. "I need an opening to get to Errin! Spiked labyrinth, NOW!"

Ivy needed an extra second to connect Lance's words to the game they had used to play ten years ago, but then the pieces clicked together. As she pressed her hands to the ground, spikes broke out of the earth in outward waves from her palm. The attack caught the two Holy Knights unprepared. Ragnell screamed as one of the spikes tore parts of her armor to shreds. Lance on the other hand danced through the emerging maze of pillars and spikes and predicted every change in the earth's surface before it came to pass. With ease he struck down Bryanor who had evaded the onslaught in utter panic.

But they had no time to celebrate their victory.

A cloudburst of metal shrapnel dropped from the skies, each the size of an arrow but twice as sharp. The sunlight disappeared as the spikes closed in on them from above; one of them held the power to end Lance's life, a critical hit could cost Ivy the same. She wouldn't make it out of proximity in time and had no hopes to deflect all of them. Never before had she wished so deeply for the ability to use «Heavy Metal» on herself like her mother could.

Blood dripped past her eyebrows. She closed her hand around Lance and begged that her fingers would shield him. But before the shards struck their target, there was a flash of light. The bright light of teleportation magic.

"_Marmeno tubu bantarumashi_!"

While struggling to come to terms with the fact that she was still alive, Ivy looked overhead. The metal shards had escaped the pull of gravity as well as the grasp of their previous conjurer and swirled in the air like a tornado. For a moment, they blocked out everything Ivy could see, until a new command in the same ancient language ordered the storm to disperse.

Gaius and Katrina levitated above the battlefield, Gaius' hand still outstretched after redirecting the metal shards. Katrina's Goddess wings glowed with magic as she raised one arm over her head.

"«Divine Hellfire»," she said, and white flames hissed out of the ground to halter the remaining Holy Knights.

"That was pretty darn spectacular," Lance said after Ivy had placed him back on his feet. "How'd you figure out where we were?"

"We found the text Mordred was after, and it told of a type of Fairy that used to live here in Avalon before it was annihilated during the Holy War," Gaius explained. "Their magic energy has been resting here ever since, confined by the remnants of their Sacred Tree."

"After finding out about this, we got here as soon as Gaius' magic energy was restored," Katrina added and brushed a loose strand of hair out of her face. "Are any of you hurt?"

"Nothing major," Lance said, "but I lost track of Errin. Last I've seen her she was fighting Nashtar."

"I can feel her magic presence in that direction." Gaius pointed past the stone tree. "But she is bringing more space between herself and us as we speak. Whether or not this retreat is done with her intention, I cannot say."

"Fine. I'm gonna go after her before she runs into Mordred. She's already injured, she won't have a fighting chance against him." Lance's expression allowed no discussion. And yet, in his willingness to make up for past mistakes, he disregarded all sense of strategy.

Ivy knew what to do. Despite her hatred towards Mordred, towards Errin, towards every single Holy Knight who created a diversion from her goal, she knew what to do. "_I_ will go after her. Just keep Mordred's foot soldiers occupied for a while."

"No, I –"

"Lance, do what you're good at and use your brain. I can reach Errin much faster than you can. It's your job to lead Katrina and Gaius so that we all make it out of here alive." As if to underscore her point, a fireball shot towards them, which Gaius parried with an orb of water at the last moment. Ivy flinched under the heat. "Sounds good to everyone?"

Gaius and Katrina nodded and rose higher in order to control the battlefield from above. At least three Holy Knights in fighting condition lay in wait in close proximity, and they would collect themselves soon enough to use any soft spot in their opponents' defenses to charge. Lance stayed put and gave Ivy a look miserable enough to think he was about to lose his right arm and leg.

"You shouldn't go alone," he said, but his tone lacked the usual strength as he failed to bend logic in a way that supported his point.

"You'd only slow me down," Ivy said with a small smile that she imagined to look awfully shaky.

His lips twitched, and he averted his gaze before meeting her eyes, this time with re-found optimism. "I know. Just… be careful. You still owe me for getting Eugenius away from your fight with Ragnell. So you better get back to make sure to repay me. And don't go out of your way to provoke confrontation with Mordred. We can figure things out once you and Errin return here."

Ivy nodded, but her smile disappeared. "I won't."

Without wasting any more time, Ivy stormed out of the circle of scorched ground where Katrina's magic hellfire had served as a short-lived barrier. The flames had died down so that a single step brought her past their destructive heat. Behind her, the sounds of battle soared, and she had to fight the urge to turn around.

The further away her steps carried her from the battlefield, the clearer she sensed the current of the earth beneath her feet, brimming with life forces from plants and small creatures alike. They formed a balanced ecosystem with uncountable small gears that kept everything running in perfect harmony as long as no one from the outside would interfere with its workings. She searched for these displays of dissonance, signs that someone had intruded this world who had no business being there.

The mist obscured her view without remorse, but she didn't need her eyes to tell where she needed to go. A beacon of magic stood out from its surroundings a short distance ahead, its signature similar to Fairy Clan magic but corrupted as it had been taken by force from its resting spot below the tree of travertine. A second figure distorted the sea of reed as they drew closer to the first one.

But Ivy arrived there long before.

He stood on a bank rising above the surrounding lakes and puddles, and his white cape danced around his silhouette like a creature of its own whenever a gust of wind caught a hold of it. Mordred had his eyes closed in concentration and muttered a string of two words to himself. The excessive usage of his magical ability across this far a distance dug furrows between his brows, and his skin was paler than usual, white amidst the washed-out colors of the mist.

His eyes darted open as Ivy made another step towards him.

"I hoped you wouldn't force my hand and bring harm to you," Mordred said with what he had to presume was sincerity. "I hoped that you would give me the chance to spare you and that you might one day understand why I can't turn a blind eye to the crimes committed over the scarce remains of magic power. But I must have underestimated your willingness to take action."

His voice resonated with the soothing patterns she had always fallen for. But too much had changed for his charms to captivate her.

"This isn't about responsibility anymore, Mordred," Ivy said and fastened her grip around Gideon's hilt. "You want to murder people who have never wronged you, and you're willing to take any twisted action that serves your purpose. You're the one who's stolen magic that doesn't belong to you, and you were willing to enslave other beings into fighting for you."

"But it's always been about responsibility. I was born with a duty, towards the people of Camelot and those beyond its borders – and unlike you, I couldn't allow myself to step away from my responsibilities because I didn't like the pressure." The gaze of his eyes was cold but not devoid of sadness, and Ivy hated herself for noticing. "The Sins need to die if we want to hope for a madness like the Holy War to never resurface. Can you call it justice when villages are raided for their magic resources, when homes are burned down, when people are slaughtered in the name of a king they've never met?"

"How can you still talk of justice? This, everything you've been doing since Arthur died is evil!"

"True evil hardly exists. Everyone does what they think is right."

The heat of rage boiled through Ivy's veins and burned all other thoughts. "Stop twisting my father's words to your liking!"

Ivy had a million more insults she wanted to throw at him. But she swallowed them all.

In a single motion she scooped up rocks from deep within the earth, threw them at Mordred and lunged forward with a swing from Gideon. He evaded both attacks by jumping back and out of the way. Ivy pursued him with a barrage of high-force, long-windup strikes.

Mordred had no opportunity to capitalize on his magical ability; other than Ivy's Shrinking Bracelet, nothing remained for him to call out to. And if Ivy kept his thoughts occupied with dodging and deflecting her onslaught, he hopefully wouldn't think to apply «Full Potential» to the magical item. Nevertheless, Mordred's magic potential was magnified by the stolen Fairy magic he used to enhance his speed and agility. Ivy would need more than her earth attacks to pin him down. Her stone prison only lasted a second before Mordred broke through. He leaped out of the reach of her earth-made spikes and pillars without missing a beat. Every swing from Gideon only struck air, and Mordred had long moved out of harm's way.

But he refrained from attacking himself. Something stopped him from fighting back, from attempting to regain control over the fight – whether his hesitance stemmed from a sense of superiority or actual reluctance, Ivy didn't dare to wonder.

The fight dragged on, and Mordred never seemed to run low on stamina. Ivy felt her arms grow heavy. The stupid wound above her eyebrows started bleeding.

Taking the precious seconds following another one of her fruitless charges, she brushed the red liquid away and flinched as her fingers touched open flesh.

"If you stand down now, we may be able to work things out together," Mordred said. "You have to understand why I can't extend this offer to all your friends, but you can live. All I need is your word that you won't interfere when I will face the Sins."

Despite Ivy's shortness of breath, «Life Force» had never seemed stronger. Every living being was visible before her inner eye, the energy of earth and plant life alike hovered at the cusp of her fingertips. She could feel it all. Mordred's force of will, the tectonic movement of the earth beneath their feet, the small fish darting through the puddles, the roots below ground, from a time when the area had been home to towering trees amidst the several lakes.

"I don't need your mercy."

As Ivy reached out to the energy around her, she was rewarded with an instant reaction. The earth tore open, forged chasms in some places and rose high in others. And out of these chasms, roots snapped free to follow Ivy's command with the same willingness as the earth.

Mordred's controlled expression spiraled into horror. With hits speaking of dread rather than prowess, he cut away the roots threatening to bound him, but their sheer mass proved too much for him to overcome; one of them wrapped itself around his ankle, another caught his sword arm before he had a chance to cut himself free.

And still, Ivy send more of them forward to engulf him. The plants coiled around his legs, around his torso, around his neck, until he had to gasp for air under the relentless pressure. Killing him would be an easy feat – Ivy wouldn't need to do more than close her outstretched hand –, and Mordred was aware of the frailty of his life as much as Ivy was.

"When did you found out what I planned to do?" he asked, his words suppressed and hard to understand. "Did Lance turn you against me? Or Errin?"

"I saw you succeed," Ivy said and stopped the advancements of the plant life under her control. "You managed to kill the Sins, and all we have been doing since was in hopes of preventing that future from happening."

A solemn smile crept up Mordred's lips that failed to reach his eyes. "Time magic, I see. I should have remembered that. That explains why you want to kill me so badly."

"I don't want to kill you," Ivy said. "I thought I did, and for a while that might have been true. But I promised to spare you."

Ivy felt the cause of disarray she had noticed before cross the remaining distance and turned halfway to see Errin step out of the mist. Her sword was unsheathed and her expression told of unflinching resolution.

Ivy loosened the grasp of roots and tendrils around Mordred and took a step backwards.

Mordred's features softened as he caught sight of Errin.

"Dear sister, I should have known that your stubbornness would lead you to defy me once again."


	23. Errin and Mordred

–Ten years before The Fall –

Errin's mother, the wife of the revered King Arthur, died after giving birth to their second child, as the exhaustion of labor claimed her life. Ever since then, Errin struggled to adjust to the absence of a caring mother figure, the many duties that forced her father to leave her on her own for long stretches of time, and the expectations everyone at court seemed to have regarding her behavior. Her title as princess of Camelot drove enough children her age away to make page-long lists, so she kept quiet about her heritage whenever the opportunity presented itself.

But for as lonely and confusing her childhood might have been, there was always someone who she could depend on: her older brother, Mordred.

He often snuck into the kitchen with her to purloin a piece of disgustingly sugary cake, with whipping cream stacked so high the cake disappeared beneath it. He defended her when their father found out about Errin training unsupervised, saying that it had been his idea all along. She repaid him by dragging him away from the library to play hide and seek within the mazelike hallways and gardens of the royal palace. She collected countless bruises so she could ride out on a horse alongside him. And she stood beside him every single time to cheer him up when he was beaten in a training fight against one of their father's Holy Knights.

The sun stood so low that eight-year-old Errin could barely make out its bright circle behind the walls of Camelot's royal palace, but she refused to leave her brother all by himself. Far from the level of precision and expertise as Nashtar, Mordred hacked down the limbs of the training doll, a sad construct of wooden sticks and straw that had its best days long behind itself. Every strike was accompanied by either a growl or a grunt to prove that Mordred had yet to overcome his anger. Demolishing half the training equipment scattered around the yard had by no means eased the feeling of defeat.

"I. Don't. WANT. TO!" Every word was followed by another slash at the training doll, each more forceful than the last, until the straw-larded head rolled from its shoulders and came to rest next to Errin's feet, where it threw its slayer an accusing glare. "Why can no one else do this stupid job?"

"Because," Errin recited her father's words, "no one will be as good a king as you. And you owe it to all those with lesser power to do your very best."

She slipped down from the fence on which she had been sitting. But what had looked elegant in her head turned out stupidly childish, as she failed to land on her feet and had to use her hands to avoid bruises on her knees – well, new bruises. She _always_ managed to scrape her knees at this or that occasion, regardless of her care. With a frowned face, she picked up the head of the training doll and attempted to place it back onto its former body. But even after tiptoeing, she couldn't reach as high, and Mordred had to help her.

They stepped back to appreciate their work.

The way the head rested on the straw creature's torso, tilted to one side and at the verge of tumbling down looked utterly ridiculous, and Errin couldn't help but giggle. And as a smile crept into Mordred's pouted face, and he could no longer hide his joy no matter how much he scowled, Errin laughed until her sides hurt.

"But seriously," Mordred said after his face had lost some of its redness. "Don't you want to be King of Camelot? That way I can do other things than train all day long and listen to old people bragging about commerce."

Errin wasn't sure what a 'commerce' was, but the word alone sounded boring. "No. I mean training all day doesn't seem too bad, but the rest of it sounds like a bunch of drawn out afternoons with the council geezers where I don't get to do what's interesting."

"Now come on, Errin, the council isn't _that_ bad."

Errin and Mordred turned towards the voice of their father. He was approaching them from the insides of the palace, dressed in his formal armor of gold-layered steel paired with the royal white cape, but the bulk of his distant court demeanor fell off of him with each step. Despite Arthur's smile, Mordred stood to attention, eyes averted to where he had thrown a handful of training swords to the ground in his tantrum. He started as Arthur put a metal-gloved hand on his shoulder.

"I see training isn't going as smoothly as hoped," he said, his tone sympathetic but with a smidge of exhaustion. This wasn't the first time Mordred had wrecked the training ground to pieces. Nor would it be the last.

"I am doing my very best," Mordred said without looking at his father.

"I know that. And that's all I'm asking for." When Arthur turned away from Mordred to look at Errin, the fatherly beam she cherished so much appeared. "And you, Errin? Have you been training with your brother again?"

"I almost beat him this morning," Errin declared, and the taste of her almost-victory returned to make her cheeks burn. "I was _this_ close to disarming him. You should've seen it!"

Arthur's smile dipped as he scooped her from her feet. "I would have loved to watch. Did I ever tell you how jealous I am of your inseparable bond? If I'm not careful, you two will forget all about me. Now, it's been a long day and you need to go to sleep. If you prepare for bed quickly, we might be able to squeeze in a _really_ short bedtime story."

Errin almost squealed but controlled her excitement in time to remind herself of the importance of manners; she knew exactly what story she wanted to ask her dad to tell. Arthur shifted Errin into his other arm and made his way back to the palace. Mordred walked beside them. His eyes followed the lines and patters on the hallway tiles, even though he had to know them by heart by now.

"You're getting heavy, little girl," Arthur said as he struggled to ascend the wide set of stairs.

"How was work today, father?" Mordred asked, his tone empty as though he was addressing a stranger. "Has the rebel Rience been found yet?"

"Nothing of sorts," Arthur said. "He's still underground somewhere, but he'll be found eventually. For the past months, Stronghold has shown no signs of resuming its hostile tendencies, so I doubt he would be able to find support there if he were to return. He is the last of the eleven rebellious kings, and once he is dealt with, we will be one step closer to achieving total peace."

"Was Nashtar allowed to become a Holy Knight because Stronghold is now part of Camelot?" Errin asked through a suppressed yawn.

"No, I knighted him because he showed great promise and swore to be loyal to the crown of Camelot," Arthur corrected. "Too many lost their lives in this rebellion, but the faults Stronghold has made as a kingdom are not his. I would have dubbed him a knight regardless of our victory over his brethren."

"But he's so slimy."

Arthur laughed and ruffled Errin's short locks. "I can't argue against that."

Their walk led them to the east wing and the chambers for the royal family, different from the sameness of other halls and corridors thanks to the floor decoration in the form of the ginormous pelt of a Black Hound – a specimen so huge Errin could not imagine the army it had to have taken to defeat the creature. Her feet downright disappeared into the colorful fur as Arthur sat her down in front of her room.

"Can you tell us the story of how the Seven Deadly Sins fought the Demon King in Camelot?" Errin asked and ignored how Mordred was rolling his eyes at her request.

"Let me see how fast you can disappear under your blanket. Then we'll talk."

Errin took on the challenge with the same energy she did every hurdle and sat expectantly at the head of her oversized bed in record time. Mordred resumed his common position next to her and let his bare feet dangle over the edge of the bed. No matter how often he claimed to be tired of the ever-same stories, he would always listen beside her before returning to his room next door.

Arthur, who had taken the time to release himself of his breastplate, cape, and gloves, lowered himself onto the foot end of the bed and made sure that Errin was properly covered up.

"Still the same story?" he asked and was answered with an enthusiastic nod and a heavy sigh from his children.

"Okay, now…" Arthur paused for effect before continuing in the special voice he reserved for storytelling. "The Holy War had broken out once again, and the forces of mankind were threatened to be overrun by the Demon Clan. The Demons were a nasty kind, and they spread darkness wherever they went, and where their feet touched the ground there would never grow a single seed again. But the worst of these evil creatures was the Demon King – he was so powerful that a single look of his could kill a man in an instant.

"The hour was dire because the dark lord of the Underworld instructed his son, the Demon prince Meliodas, to assemble all Ten Commandments and serve as a vessel to them – as soon as this deed was done, the Demon King would have complete dominion over the realm of Britannia, and no man, Fairy, or Giant could hope to stand against his powerful magic. But Meliodas defied his father. He was not only a son of the Demon King. He was also a member of the most powerful group of knights this world had ever seen: The Seven Deadly Sins. These heroes didn't know fear because they could always rely on each other's strength, and they all gathered to free Meliodas from the clutches of his father.

"But they arrived too late – Meliodas had already absorbed the Ten Commandments, and their corruptive might had turned him into the manifestation of the Demon King. After millennia in Purgatory, the place where only cursed souls go to atone for their wrongdoings, the Demon King was free to enact his wrath onto the mortal realm. It seemed all hope was lost. But our heroes never gave up on their friend. Even though the hour was dark and their abilities seemed no match for the dark lord, they entered Meliodas' mind to gift him with new courage. And Meliodas heard them. He heard of their unending support and of the strength they had garnered because he had put his trust in them. He knew then that his fight against his father wasn't hopeless, that he would prevail because he wasn't alone – there had never been any need for standing up to the darkness alone.

"And as Meliodas freed himself from the controlling hands of his father, the Demon King realized that he had lost. Faced with these powerful heroes without a vessel to control, he felt fear enter his dark heart for the very first time. The Seven Deadly Sins combined their strength, and united like that, they drove the Demon King away. He was less than a ghost, less than a shadow, that's how weak he was. And thanks to the Seven Deadly Sins, Britannia was saved from his evil, and the kingdom of Camelot could be rebuilt. The Seven Deadly Sins meanwhile, celebrated their victory with their allies and friends for seven days and seven nights, and their names are known by everyone – as the heroes who purged the darkness and ended the Holy War. The End."

Errin clapped. "Aren't the Seven Deadly Sins the most amazing people ever?" she asked while hopping up and down on her cushions. The story had wiped away all remains of her tiredness.

"I couldn't agree more," Arthur said with a youthful grin. "No one will ever be as amazing as the Seven Deadly Sins!"

"Can we hear the story about the return of the Demon King next?"

Arthur pushed Errin back under her blankets with a gentle but firm hand. "Maybe tomorrow, if my meeting with the King of Orkney doesn't take too long. You should sleep now. You both should."

He attempted to shove Mordred towards the door, but his son freed himself from the loose grip around his shoulder.

"If no one will ever be as capable as the Sins, what point is there in trying at all?" he asked. The bitterness he had carried around all afternoon had crept back into his voice.

A shadow might have passed Arthur's features, but the dim light of the room made it impossible to be sure. He tried putting a hand on Mordred's shoulder a second time, maybe accompanied with words of reassurance. But Mordred was out of the door before his father had a chance to stop him, and more than a low 'Night, Errin' didn't escape his lips.

Arthur shuffled after Mordred with the energy of an old and broken man, stepped through the frame, and shut the door behind him. Errin was left behind in the shadows of the room that was too big for her alone, with curtains of brocade too valuable and porcelain toys she never played with. The candle next to her bedpost had flickered and died when Mordred's departure had stirred the air.

She would later wish to have been more mindful of Mordred's words and strange behavior on that day.

:.:.:

– One month before The Fall –

Side by side, Errin and Mordred overlooked the capital of Camelot as its rooftops glistered under the cloudless sky. The summer heat had scorched the grass covering the gentle hill, and made it insufferable to wear a set of full body armor. Errin had traded the metal for a lighter doublet of red fabric, but if need be, she would fetch the armor from the depths of her saddleback. As soon as she would have brought enough space between herself and the city, she had little doubt of giving into the temptation and replace her face with an anonymous helmet.

"Will nothing I say change your mind?" Mordred asked. His eyes rested on the cluster of fortifications and towers and houses that ten thousand people called home. Far more if one counted the great many farmers and village folks living in the surrounding hills.

Errin studied his profile. Grief had eaten its way into his features and made him look far older than his nineteen years should amount to.

"The Knights of the Round Table are your creation – you don't need me to oversee them in your place," Errin said, even though she knew that her reluctance to join the Round Table wasn't the only matter standing between them.

She had a great many reasons for why she needed to leave Camelot so soon after the funeral of their father. At least she told herself to have valid excuses when doubts arose.

"I don't even have a way to make sure that the council will eventually hand the throne over," Mordred said after a few beats of silence. "They might just as well forever hold onto the claim that father thought me too young and too inexperienced."

The words of their father came to Errin all on their own. "You just have to keep trying then. You have great aspirations, and eventually they will have to admit that. We're at peace now, there's no threat Camelot needs to fight. So there's no harm if no one sits on the throne for a while."

"Are we at peace though? When you patrol the borders and travel to the furthest corners of this realm, do you see peace?"

The honest answer would have been no. Gwynned and Demetia only held their shaky truce with Camelot because Camelot's troops and Holy Knights outclassed their military – and these kingdoms nevertheless performed raids across their border regions on a regular basis. Civilians had been slaughtered, libraries had been ransacked, items with magical power had been stolen. And to the east, the kingdom of Orkney waited for the chance to overwhelm Camelot's defenses.

But Mordred didn't need Errin to be reminded of these things. "For as long as magic and power are limited, there will always be small conflicts like these. But the Holy War will never resume, and we should be thankful for that."

Mordred contemplated about her words, or maybe his lost expression spoke of other thoughts only he knew. "I wish the people of Sorestan could have seen it the same way as you."

Errin averted her eyes to the reins in her hands, braided with golden threads. She had heard of Sorestan, a village north of the capital, and what had happened there. A mage used to reside in this town, skilled in the magic arts and owner of countless small trinkets with marginal magic energy. For years, all had been fine, the mage had gone about her business and so had the villagers. But when the single well dried out, the people became desperate. They demanded for the mage to return their water, and when she argued such spells lay beyond her abilities, they blamed her for the crisis. She was burned at the stake. The villagers fought over her magical trinkets, killed their brothers and sisters, and hoarded their haul until Sorestan stood in flames. The death toll surpassed the hundreds.

Errin had heard of Sorestan. Mordred had witnessed the aftermath.

The urge to leave grew stronger every passing second until Errin gave in and turned her trusted horse around. After so many years, she and Mordred had learned to part from one another, and she thought there was no longer need for weak words of goodbye. But Mordred surprised her by calling after her one last time.

"You will always be able to come back if you ever need help." Regardless of the turmoil that had plagued him over the past days, his eyes were full of sincerity.

He would always have a supportive hand for her, no matter for how long she disappeared to the farthest corners of Camelot. It had been this way all her life.

She waved Mordred farewell and spurred her horse. The clam of Salisbury plain welcomed her, and she relished the refreshing breeze. The absence of the noise of Camelot enabled her to push aside the death of her father and all the worries that were about to follow after.

:.:.:

– Present –

This familiar gaze with which he looked at her threatened to make all her resolve tumble. She hadn't seen him in so long – not since she had left Camelot on a summer afternoon an eternity ago. And even this farewell was a memory only she could hold onto. Mordred hadn't seen her in months, long before Arthur had died. All he recalled was the day she had pushed away him and his offer to join the Knights of the Round Table.

Errin hated herself for the quivering in her injured leg and for the illusory hope that she could walk over to her brother and forget all that he had done and all that he planned to do. He hadn't committed murder yet. He hadn't yet crossed the line from which there was no return. But judging from his expression, this deep conviction carved into his feature, he was willing to do what Errin feared the most. Her brother was no longer the man she had known all her life – no matter how genuine his smile might seem.

"Go, the others need your help more than I do," Errin addressed Ivy. She hesitated, maybe she wanted to say something, but Errin shut her up. "Go! You promised to spare him, and you did just that. The rest is up to me."

When Ivy turned and raced off to where Lance had to be engaged in fierce battle, Errin fastened the grip around the hilt of her broadsword. After Nashtar had returned to the battlefield, Lance needed every aid he could get to defeat the knight. Other than Mordred he was by far and away the most formidable player left on the field, and Errin had had no choice but to cut her duel with him short to reach Mordred.

Alongside Ivy, the roots and tendrils that wavered around Mordred and prevent him from advancing disappeared. With a concise motion of his wrist, Mordred made quick work of the remaining plant life.

He unclipped his cloak but remained where he stood.

"I suppose you still won't change your mind if I ask you."

"Do you really want war so badly that you are willing to murder the heroes of old?" Errin shot back, careful to shift her stance into a position that would provide her with more stability. "Those same heroes our father used to tell us stories about, those same heroes who did everything in their power to help you?"

"I want peace. Peace that doesn't threaten to turn into a new rendition of the Holy War because power is only held by seven individuals who are accountable to no one."

There was so little point in arguing with him; Errin had never won an argument against her brother, and nothing had divided them with an unbridgeable rift this wide before. For all the hope she had clung onto, hopes of preventing him from a path of violence and death, she knew that Mordred wouldn't change what he believed in.

Not even for her sake.

* * *

At some point, Lance had given up all attempts to control the flow of battle with strategy. His efforts were no more promising than fighting a raging ocean with his bare hands while he happened to be drowning in that exact ocean.

Gaius had kept Coel's metal-based attacks to a mere inconvenience, Katrina had retaliated Orland's flames with her own, and Lance had taken his time to incapacitate those Holy Knights bold enough to advance past the defensive lines. So far, he had escaped both death and killing. But this approach only lasted as long as it wasn't challenged by changing circumstances, and when Nashtar reemerged from the mist of obscurity, the scales had dipped in his favors at an instant.

He might not have the tactical prowess Gawain brought to the table, but among the Holy Knights he had made a name for himself, a presence to inspire willing subordination. And he, like Lance, knew that a united front posed a higher hurdle to overcome. And while all this would have been a severe but manageable problem, the enemy's seemingly unlimited supply of incantation orbs to heal their wounds with gave Lance a headache. How Mordred had gotten his hands on so many of these pricy trinkets, he had no idea, but the fact of the matter was that he had come to Avalon far better prepared than Lance and company. In hindsight, perhaps he should have refrained from confronting Mordred in Camelot. If the tide of battle did not change in the next minutes, Lance would be forced to pay the price for this mistake. Or worse, watch someone else pay the price.

He cursed a string of colorful oaths under his breath as he dispersed yet another one of Ragnell's wavery clones with a backhanded slice. As long as Bryanor or Eugenius alternated in occupying his attention, Ragnell could send as many copies at him as she liked without fearing consequences – whereas Lance needed to stay on guard since one of them always had the potential to turn out as the real thing.

Above his head, a cloud of metal shards exploded into pulverized particles, and he and Eugenius halted their clash of sword to shield their eyes from the fine drizzle that succeeded. Lance, worn out and tired, recovered slower from the diversion, but Eugenius hesitated to capitalize on the opening; his harmless strike didn't come close to scratching Lance.

Dazed by the all the fighting that dragged out for longer than his muscles and reflexes tolerated, Lance nearly slipped as he drove his opponent back with an uninspired chain of swings – only to lose that acquired ground right thereafter as Bryanor replaced his comrade.

What Lance needed was a pause, an opening to think, but with the remorseless pile of odds stacked against him, there wouldn't emerge a moment to breath because he wished for one – and Nashtar hadn't even cared to join the fun thus far.

"Gaius!" Lance shouted between two evasive steps that saved him from Bryanor's forceful blows. "Do me a favor and get these annoying pests off of me for a sec!"

Gaius' response came with lengthy delay after he had stacked what sounded like three different incantations atop each other to risk the short-lived distraction. "You must be aware that all my wide-range spells have a high probability of hitting you if I were to send them into the fray."

"Yeah, I've noticed." Otherwise he or Katrina could've blasted these pesky knights into surrender a long time ago. Lance grunted as Bryanor tested the durability his defenses with another heavy jab. "Just get to it already."

While hovering high above the ground at the edge of Lance's periphery, Gaius rearranged the air particles to twirl in an expanding tornado. Lance felt his balance waver despite being planted a good distance away from the elemental manipulation. The pressure increased, the noise soared, and the tornado tore out of Gaius' grasp to strike the battle field where the bulk of enemy forces had ganged up. Lance dropped his right sword and performed a one-handed backflip that brought him away from the epicenter and out of danger. He swayed a little when he landed on his feet, but the fact that his abandoned sword had been caught in the storm to pivot into arm's reach for him to pick out of the air more than made up for his less than graceful landing.

His adversaries were less fortunate; Bryanor had been blown out of sight, and Eugenius and Ragnell were both holding on to their disarrayed sense of up and down to little success. This was the best opening he would get. No time to think now.

With the last remains of energy he had to spare, Lance sprinted forward and towards Nashtar.

* * *

Gaius could hardly see the others through the smoke screens and the bursts of light in the form of magic-infused projectiles. His last spell had turned the battlefield into a mess where he knew neither up nor down, and he feared to have used up more energy than reasonable. His breath rattled in his chest. What if he passed out? What if the pendant around his neck broke, hit by one of Coel's stray arrows? Would he drop from the sky and die before he struck the ground?

His life felt so fragile after Belialuin. One careless move could snuff out all his thoughts forever. He didn't belong on the battlefield, he belonged in a library where the worst and most exciting thing to happen was a misplaced book, and the longer Gaius clung to this idea, the weaker he felt. The voices of Belialuin whispered their chant. Or maybe it was his own voice that told him to surrender.

A flaming metal spike shot past his ear, and the heat burned his right cheek. Too out of his mind to find the right spell words, Gaius hurled a battery of icicles in the general direction from which the arrow had flown. Even if he had calculated the angle without fail, Orland would have little trouble melting the projectiles before they could do damage.

Gaius couldn't see Katrina. The mist had swallowed her, and perhaps the creeping hands of death had already reached for her. With his eyes closed, Gaius fought for air, forced his heartbeat to calm, and searched for her presence.

Too many impressions hailed onto him, too many spells and incantations and magical presences as the magic field itself rippled at the cusp of tearing in two. Nashtar and the Fairy magic he had stolen dominated the maelstrom, and Ivy's light seemed feeble by comparison.

Gaius's eyes darted open.

Ivy?

She had returned without Errin and was heading straight into Nashtar's arms. Despite the renewed strength in her presence, an incredible combination of Fairy and Giant magic, Nashtar's abilities dwarfed hers, and he had only waited for this opportunity. Lance wouldn't reach them in time.

Gaius was all too aware of the brittleness of his life. But if he let another moment of hesitance control his thoughts, Nashtar would win, Mordred would win, and Merlin would die before he could ask why she had prolonged his life.

With a time spell to freeze Nashtar on his lips, Gaius delved into his last reserves, even reached out to the magic inside his pendant – but the effort was too much, overcharged his dead heart and his dead mind, the magic dispersed unused, and like a book knocked from the highest shelf, Gaius fell.

* * *

As Lance was crossing the torn and tormented ground towards Nashtar, Ivy emerged out of the mist, alive and unscathed – and ignorant towards the danger she found herself in. Lance caught her gaze too late, the warning on his lips failing to reach her in time, and Nashtar made his move.

Bestowed with Fairy magic far beyond his wildest dreams, Nashtar released the true might of his power, and the freed magic clung to every source and vessel it could find in proximity. The forces of iron and fire doubled over as a new wave of energy infused their spellcasters, Katrina puffed somewhere above as her magic threatened to grow beyond her grasp, Lance's perspective shifted to reveal events unfolding in slow motion – and Ivy's Shrinking Bracelet glowed without her intent.

* * *

In the heat of battle, Katrina had lost her sense of time and space, but as a new wave of energy washed over her, hijacked her control, and made her hands tremble, panic sunk its teeth into her heart.

She couldn't lose control, she had done so well with directing her light and darkness up until this point. But from one heartbeat to the next, the light escaped her palm, and the darkness behind her eyes tore down her barriers. The heat crackling between her polar powers scorched her insides, but what she feared far more was the thought of hurting, killing someone else with her lack of self-control. The darkness might consume one of the knights of the Round Table. The light might eradicate one of her friends.

Had she learned nothing since the Colossai who had died at her hands? Was she still to weak to protect what mattered to her, destined to lose her brother, her parents, and every friend she had in this world?

No, not again, not this time. Katrina had fought her demons and her ghosts. The magic at her hands, amplified or not, followed her command. This surge of power was not a curse but a blessing; in her hands, she held the strength to save not kill.

In a strange moment of clarity, where mist and magic and even the bloody smell of war lifted, Katrina saw Gaius as he fell out of his levitation spell towards the rugged battlefield. The pendant around his neck flickered with blue light like a candle about to go out. And with wings of light and darkness, she raced after him and caught his hand before he shattered on the ground.

* * *

No matter how slowly her form dwindled, Lance's feet didn't move one fraction faster, and Nashtar reached her long before he did. As Ivy was still caught in the delay of surprise, the working of her magic item not concluded, Nashtar swung his sword. The strike cut deep into the back of her left hand. Ivy screamed, Gideon dropped into the muddy waters below, and Nashtar stepped behind her to wrap his arm around her throat before she could think to react.

Lance skidded to a halt, one of his swords raised to point at Nashtar – and by proxy Ivy, who had turned into his living shield and getaway ticket. The claws of pain carved its way into Ivy's features as she tried in vain to free herself. The fingers of her left hand pulled at Nashtar's arm, but she couldn't get a solid grip. Blood ran down her forearm. Her fingers stopped moving.

His gaze focused on Lance, Nashtar increased the stranglehold around Ivy's throat and raised the tip of his sword to hover an inch away from her cheek.

"Let her go," Lance growled. The blade of his sword trembled in the air.

Nashtar cut Ivy's struggles short with a brutal kick to her knee; she slacked in his grasp. "I don't stand to gain anything if I do."

"You gain your life."

Nashtar laughed a humorless laugh. Somewhere behind Lance a burst of brightness and heat lit up the air, but he couldn't spare a second to look for its cause. For a brief moment, Nashtar's face was illuminated by bursts of orange and crimson.

"Ask yourself this: can you live with taking another man's life? Can you go to sleep with a clear conscious after you've put more souls to rest on a single day than you can count, all in the name of someone else? Can you look at your reflection after you've murdered those of your kind because you don't want to end up weak like they are?" Nothing beyond grim distance filled Nashtar's gaze – the distance of a man who had long abandoned his sorrow. "Tell me, Lancelot, will you be able to live with yourself once you've killed me?"

Lance's eyes darted from Nashtar to Ivy, whose pained form remained upright to shield Nashtar's torso, and back to Nashtar. The thin blade, outstretched between them, stopped its tremor.

"I don't want to go through this." Lance turned by a margin. His feet found grip in the bed of the pond. "But I will if I have to."

With no magic resources left to spend and no magical ability to rely on, Nashtar had no means to stop the sword slash from cutting into his flesh. His strategy had been founded on nothing but Lance's reluctance, and for one final heartbeat, realization sparked in his eyes.

Nashtar's head rolled from his shoulders. He remained standing for a moment, as though his body couldn't comprehend what had happened and stayed unwilling to admit defeat.

Then he toppled over, and Ivy was freed from his grasp to stumble into Lance's arms.

* * *

Under the heat of the climbing sun, the mist had recoiled, but the field of shallow ponds, treacherous reed, and muddy banks remained a difficult terrain to deal with. If Errin didn't place her steps with care and found a way to overcome her leg injury, she would fight her surroundings as much as she would her brother. The weight of the steel in her hands gave her a fixpoint to focus her thoughts on. She had gone through the first seconds of a fight uncounted times. There was no anxiousness left to divert her attention. This was no different from her previous duels.

She charged as Mordred was taking another step over the uneven ground and was for a moment not a complete master of his balance. But as Errin had expected, he regained his focus long before her sword could hope to reach him, and their weapons clashed with a sound plucked straight out of Errin's memory.

Her opening strike had been blunt and without finesse, and Mordred redirected the force behind the blow without real effort by holding his sword crossways in front of his torso. The chain attack Errin enacted next was equally deflected. One mutual step brought them away from each other. They started circling and lapsed back into old training habits at the same time.

Test the terrain. Search for a weakness in your opponent's stance or footwork. Intimidate or mock them if you deem it an effective approach.

Errin cut the waiting short and used a simple but useful technique she had learned at the beginning of her career as a Holy Knight; chain a couple swings from switching sides and angles together and drive your adversary backwards with brute force. And while Mordred did retreat a handful of feet, he remained in full control of his movements at every second.

Their physical strength equaled another, and Errin's muscles ached as she blocked the onslaught Mordred racked her with. She spun out of the way, and his next hit struck air. He saw her low-aimed thrust to his side coming and sidestepped without breaking his pace. She turned her forward movement into a sideways one; the metal of her blade brushed over the steel of his breastplate without inflicting any damage beyond the steel.

For this move, Errin had traded her solid stance, and she tasted the consequences of her decision right thereafter in the form of a kick to her kneecap. Her leg buckled, and she was forced to dive down to evade the slash that would have severed her head otherwise. She rolled out of the way of Mordred's downward strike, ignored the taste of muddy water in her mouth, and climbed back to her feet – in due time to block the assault of heavy strikes Mordred sent her way.

His calm demeanor gave way to the anger boiling underneath, and every hit was infused with more force than the last as he hacked her defensive pattern down to its foundations. The last of these strikes came so raw and desperate that the successive downtime trapped him in one motion for too long. Errin brought her elbow forward to meet his chin, and blood splattered as his nose broke.

He couldn't use his magical ability against her, and neither could she. Regardless of how much magic potential each of them possessed, this fight came down to strength and stamina, action and reaction.

With an emotionless glare, Mordred rubbed the blood from his face and resumed to circle her. Errin did the same, in a hopeless attempt to lure him to where the ground lost itself in the mist and where uneven pools lay hidden out of view. His armor would make him more vulnerable to uneven terrain than Errin – but Mordred predicted her plan and countered. He charged and they locked weapons as steel of equal quality ground over the edges of one another. His two inches in height advantage enacted additional force against Errin's wrist, and her pain receptors protested. To keep the blockade up high, she had to twist her wrist further and further. Her rear foot slipped through the dirt, and she bit her tongue as she lost that crucial part of her balance.

And with one last effort, Mordred broke through her defenses and cut into the flesh of her torso beneath the chain mail; his sword would have cut far deeper if Errin hadn't withdrawn sideways at the last possible moment.

She stumbled backwards to rebuild distance and felt blood under her hand as she reached out to touch the wound. Her breath hitched in her throat, and she swayed under the intoxicating effects of blood loss.

If he had told her that all was forgiven once she stepped down, she might have accepted his offer in a fit of weakness. But he had wasted his forgiveness on another, and there remained nothing but the grim feeling of betrayal. Mordred's eyes shone with distant cold as he advanced to hunt after his sister.

A hit with the hilt of his sword knocked one of her teeth out. She countered by burying the penknife from her belt in his upper leg. Blow for blow, eye for eye they pounced on each other, a battle that would only see losers, no victors.

His determination blazed as high as ever, as high as hers, but all Mordred was fighting for were high concepts and a crowd of shadowy faces, of none of which he would learn the name. And this weakness proved Errin's strength.

He set out to clash swords with her anew, his movement a display of perfect study in spite of his wounds, forged into his brain by the most capable fighters in all of Britannia. Errin knew every single muscle movement he would make. And she remained still. Her broadsword hung at her side, and its tip touched the torn-up earth below.

The moment before Mordred ended her life with a diagonal slash, Errin shifted to the right where Mordred would end his swing, where his weapon would not arrive until another second.

This second was all she needed.

She reached for Mordred's hand with her own and pried the fingers wrapped around his sword hilt open. His eyes widened, and he didn't think to hold onto his weapon.

They both remained motionless for another moment, the fingers of his right hand interwoven with those of her left. Caught in a moment of eternity, they stared into the eyes of the other. Eyes they had known since as far back as their memories reached, eyes they had met in glee, anger, sadness, and distance over the course of eighteen years. Bright gold and dark violet. Always pulled into the current of the other, always sure to find comfort in the depths of their opposite. Determination brimmed in both of them. Determination to carry out what they deemed right, a mindset that had started as one but had diverged over the years.

Until Mordred's eyes became clouded. Blood covered the corner of his lips as he opened them to say something. But the words remained unsaid. He slumped forward, into Errin's arms, and both of them sank to their knees.

Errin's sword had cut so deeply in between the separate plates of his armor, had torn through so many vital organs that his breathing was sure to only last a handful of seconds longer. Any sort of aid would arrive too late. No amount of wishful thinking would cease to flood of blood staining the ground beneath them. His blood, her blood, the blood of the Pendragon.

"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry for never being there when you needed me." Errin buried her head into his shoulder. "I always wanted to return some of your kindness, I always wanted to be strong so that you wouldn't have to worry about me. I wanted… to stand beside you and give you the helping hand you always offered me."

Tears streamed down her face, and her voice broke. She pulled him closer, and his heartbeat flickered against her own. His breathing faltered with a raspy sound as blood filled his lungs instead of air.

"I love you. I won't leave you this time, I promise."

Errin hugged her brother until his heart stopped beating, and she stayed this way for a long while after silence enwrapped them. The magic he had stored inside him, the little thread of energy that had defined his life and the path he had set out on left his body alongside his final breath to return to the soil. So that it might nurture future beings to come.

* * *

**(A/N) **That was it, the big final confrontation. I hope you enjoyed. After this, I plan to have one more chapter for the aftermath and an epilogue that should tie up the remaining loose ends. This chapter is once again late and probably includes too many section breaks. But I could not for the life of me decide on another way to make it work - and I spent a lot of time puzzling my head over this. Hopefully the quick cuts managed to portray the confusion of battle and didn't just end up confusing you. Please let me know what you think.

So long!


	24. Home

Without Nashtar to guide them, the remaining Knights of the Round Table fell into panic and disarray, and keeping them at a distance proved an easy feat. What little belligerence they held onto, dissolved into empty threats as Errin arrived on the battlefield, the sword of her brother in her hands. She never batted an eye or raised her voice, but her presence alone convinced the knights of Camelot to lay down their arms. They hadn't made up their minds on whether they wanted to bend their knees to her, to the only living heir of Arthur's bloodline that they had sworn to preserve, but in a month's time they would know where they placed their loyalty.

Some of them fled to never be seen again.

In spite of all her best attempts and in spite of all the remedial magic brimming and blooming at her fingertips, Katrina was unable to heal the wound on Ivy's left hand. Nashtar's blade had cut through most of the connective tendons, and by the time they found a safe opening to treat the injury, Ivy had lost all feeling in four of her fingers. She shuddered every time she tried to flex the muscles of her hand and all but her thumb failed to respond. But her relief over knowing that the hardship was over outshined the gloom of loss.

As time progressed, the sun dispersed the remaining wafts of mist. A summer sun that would never come to see The Fall of Liones.

From a gentle hillslope over which the wind brushed the grass in untiring waves, the five of them looked back to where the countless springs and pools and creeks of Avalon glistered in the sun to create a tapestry of diamonds. The tree of stone, that had once provided shelter to a people lost and forgotten, loomed over the area, its bark so porous that the next gust of wind might carry it away.

"Can you believe this?" Lance asked. "We actually made it. We defeated some of the most revered Holy Knights in Britannia, prevented the death of the Seven Deadly Sins, and even one-upped time itself. If that isn't worth a round of applause, I don't know what is."

"Unfortunately, the risk that accompanies the celebration of our victory is too great to be carelessly taken," Gaius said while his fingers tossed his silver pendant around. "We won't be able to keep the death of the prince of Camelot a secret for long, but any additional information we share promises disastrous consequences."

"Yeah, yeah, I know that. Wasn't looking forward to the fuss anyway."

"I'm just happy that we get to return to our parents without any more worries," Katrina said.

Despite her demand for answers regarding Tristan, Zeldris, and her dad's decision to break his ties to the Demon Clan, Katrina wanted to push all questions aside for a _long_ while if this allowed her to fall around her parents' necks and not let go of them until her mind had adjusted to the fact that they wouldn't disappear.

"If we don't wanna raise suspicions, we might have to delay that for a bit," Lance said with an empathetic gaze in Katrina's direction. "They should still be in Camelot, but we better make sure to arrive in Liones before they get back and start wondering where we've disappeared to. Gaius, if you could lend us a hand with that…"

"I will do my best."

Gaius extended an arm in an opening for the teleportation spell when Errin spoke up.

"You go ahead and do that." There it reappeared, the bitterness that poisoned her voice as she stared into the void. "I have to return to Camelot; bury Mordred, and try to figure out an arrangement with the council before they seize all remains of control over the kingdom."

"Forget that."

Katrina, just as much as the others, turned in surprise. Ivy recoiled a little as her hand refused to obey her command, but her stance didn't waver and neither did the firmness in her eyes. "This just as much your achievement as it is ours," she said. "Maybe more. Without you, we wouldn't have made it as far as Camelot. So it's only fair that you stick with us till the very end."

Without waiting for any sort of invitation, Ivy rendered the remaining distance obsolete and hugged Errin. And after one beat of stunned overwhelm, Errin reciprocated.

"We can figure things out later – Camelot, Mordred, all that. You won't have to do it alone." Compelled by Ivy's words and with shaking arms, Errin deepened the hug.

Lance saved himself a snarky comment, but his infectious smile made Katrina grin alongside him.

"I suppose this is my signal then," Gaius said once Ivy and Errin parted. "_Mashi sumeti io Liones sumetumaro kiatohara_."

Avalon faded from view, but its afterimage echoed through Katrina's mind. With the amounts of magic stored within its shallow waters, Avalon was bound to attract those with greedy minds and high aspirations in the decades to come, but for the moment it remained nothing more than a set of glistering pearls aligned on a thread no one paid attention to. Another one of Britannia's relics, out of a time when war had been the days' only sense and purpose – and in times of peace, nothing fell as far out of the human interest as the relics of past conflict.

Katrina's eyes needed time to readjust to the sunlight that replaced the unforgiving brightness of Gaius' teleportation spell, but once they did, her seven hearts leaped all at once.

The Boar Hat with its white plaster and shingles of burnt clay stood out of the surrounding green of plant life with the same stoicism Katrina had loved in the building since her childhood. The iron sign, which labeled it as a full-fledged tavern, swung in the breeze with a rusty squeal plucked from her memory, and Katrina knew if she set a careless foot on the lowest step ascending to the porch, the wood would creak loud enough to wake everyone sleeping inside.

But the sound of voices from inside made her forget everything else. Lance, Gaius, Ivy, Errin, all of them blurred, and Katrina trancelike walked up the three steps separating her from the agape entrance; steps she had climbed a million times, but never had they felt this important.

She never reached the handle to push the door inward.

Her dad, signaled by the noise of his doorsteps, stood in front of her to look her over. His eyes brimmed with delight and affection. "See Elizabeth, I told ya that she couldn't have gone far. She knows her ways around, so it was only a matter of time —"

Whatever else Meliodas had wanted to say was drowned whole and entirely as Katrina jumped around his neck. Her cheeks burned, the tears sowed her throat shut, but she was too happy to care.

He patted the back of her head and distorted her hair. "Say little butterfly, you wouldn't happen to be playing a very extensive round of hide-and-seek but just forgot to tell anyone?"

"I've missed you so much."

"Not as much as I've missed you."

Meliodas let go of Katrina long enough for her to wrap her arms around Elizabeth, who had emerged from the doorframe right after him, before he laid his arms around both of them. Katrina cuddled deeper into the embrace. If this moment never passed and she forever remained entangled in their warmth, she could not have been more joyful.

All was good now.

Meliodas, slow to realize the world beyond his family, looked up to examine the quartet of battered youths that watched the reunion with awkward smiles and awkward shifts.

"And you were all playing hide-and-seek with Katrina?" he asked.

"Yes," Lance answered as Ivy opted for a weak 'no'.

Meliodas snickered. "When will you two learn to come up with a story to tell _before _you lie to people's faces? Howzer's been climbing every wall in the castle because you both disappeared. Now that we're on the subject, Gaius, Merlin is looking for you. And if you don't wanna increase her fury any more, you should probably report back to her before she starts hacking Camelot to pieces."

"Why are you two back already anyway?" Lance asked before Gaius could start a lengthy chain of excuses and apologies. "Shouldn't you be at Camelot?"

"We were," Elizabeth said, "but Mordred didn't seem fond of our involvement, and some of the things Merlin said… I just wanted to return home."

Katrina and Elizabeth locked eyes throughout the last few words, and Katrina knew exactly what her mom meant. Both of them were beaming with a brightness that made the Goddess Triskelion flash in their eyes.

And if Katrina had ever known one truth she wanted to uphold with all her heart and all her will, it would be the persistence of this brightness, so that it may counter the dark in an unending state of balance.

* * *

Not long after, the rest of them arrived.

Cynthia, Aura, and Helbram had planned to pay a visit to the Boar Hat to leave uncle Howzer a bit of room to cool off and prepare himself for his eventual beheading at the hands of Diane, but they hadn't expected to run into their sister.

And as Helbram's eyes lit up upon recognizing the people in the strange gathering in front of the Boar Hat's porch, Ivy couldn't hold back anymore. She managed to pull all three of them into a hug in spite of Aura's protests and Cynthia's initial stiffness. Her eyes filled with tears before she could think to hold them back.

"Did you take care of Helbram and Aura for me?" Ivy asked into the shoulder of her oldest sister with a raspy voice. Cynthia nodded, and Ivy hardly managed a low 'thank you' before the sobs overpowered her.

Past the veil of tears, Lance scooped up Aura to whirl her around until she giggled, and when their gazes met, Ivy was certain she had never seen him as grateful. Even the undying regret seemed buried under the bliss of the moment.

His eyes wide like violet-colored marbles, Helbram pointed at the cut above Ivy's eyebrows and the encrusted blood. "Did you fight someone?"

With a painful amount of effort, Ivy raised her hand to rest against Helbram's cheek and nodded. The illusion of the touch on her numb fingertips throbbed through her veins. Fake but oh so bittersweet.

"And did you win?"

Ivy smiled and brushed a strand of reddish hair out of his face with her thumb. "I sure did. All thanks to Errin and Lance. Don't tell him that though or he'll insist that I owe him."

Helbram tilted his head. "Errin?"

"You've met her already, you dummy." Ivy turned Helbram in her arms to allow him a better look at Errin, who watched from the sidelines with unease plastered onto her face. Unease and a lack of belonging. She almost looked like the eleven-year-old girl who had stumbled into Ivy when she had first visited Camelot. Lonely. "You remember Errin, don't you?"

Helbram locked back and forth between the stranger and his sister. "Her heart feels different," he whispered into Ivy's ears. "It's not that loud and confusing anymore."

After Ivy gave him an encouraging push, Helbram left her side to float in front of Errin. He bounced up and down a little as he abandoned his coyness and donned a manner that he hoped resembled his father. Unfortunately for him, his constant wavering in the air killed all the sense of adulthood he wanted to evoke.

"Thank you for helping Ivy win her fight. If you and Ivy are friends, then we can be friends too. Was that good, Ivy?"

"That was great."

Helbram hopped away to ask for his turn to be whirled around in circles by Lance.

But as Ivy turned her focus to where Lance was tackled and pinned down by his cousins under howls and laughs, Errin surprised her with her attempt at conversation. "I wanted to ask this since the disbanding party of the Sins, but I never had an excuse for it… Do you dance?"

Ivy's whole being filled with warmth, and the amusement leaked out of her with no means for her to tuck it back inside.

"Hell no."

They grinned, one idiotic smile wider than the other.

:.:.:

Time passed them by with rapid-fire speed, and before Ivy realized the change, daytime was fading and the shadows around the Boar Hat grew larger. Gaius made multiple attempts to return to Camelot, to Merlin's laboratory, but like with Errin, the rest of the group denied him the opportunity. And thanks to Katrina's encouragement, he warmed up to Cynthia in particular. They had crossed paths before, but both had preferred to keep their distance rather than learning more about the other. With Katrina as their mediating link, they got along surprisingly well – the endless pool of knowledge on human customs and architecture Gaius could entertain Cynthia with certainly helped.

Once in a while, Gaius' gaze grew blank, and he clutched the pendant around his neck like a drowning man would a lifeline. Something about him had changed during his time in Belialuin, and the battle of Avalon had done its part. He presented himself as less unapproachable, more eager to partake in the conversation around him, but there was also vulnerability in his eyes whenever his mind circled to other places.

Ivy considered a direct question, but she never followed through on the idea. She knew the need to sort one's mind on their own before sharing the nightmares.

As Meliodas was about to shove the group inside for an early dinner he had prepared – a prospect horrifying enough to turn Lance's faces ashen-white – Ivy picked up on a sound that made her heart beat faster in her ribcage. The phantom pain in her left hand halted its endless throbbing.

Conversation, the sound of voices, three in total.

Lance's gaze wandered south, and his eyes lit up as he sat Aura down. Ivy made a step without ordering her muscles, towards the tree line. Three figures emerged between the slender trunks of chestnut trees and birches. Two appeared humanoid while the last revealed itself to be of Fairy kind from afar.

Diane led the way, entangled in a conversation with Ban, but her focus broke as she recognized the people clustered in front of the Boar Hat, and she picked up speed in an instance. Helbram reached her first and wrapped his arms around her shoulders with a grin.

Ivy crossed the remaining distance separating herself from Diane and stood motionless in front of her. Her breathing hitched. Diane's gaze shone with endless support, and only a hint of worry discolored the image, brought forth by Ivy's conflicted expression.

"Mom," was the only word Ivy managed to stutter before she flung herself around her mother's neck, and for the second time today, the stupid tears ran down her cheeks.

Diane set Helbram free to embrace Ivy and stroke her hair, a little overwhelmed by the fact that Ivy had fallen into her arms so willingly. So many years had passed since Ivy had last felt like a child in her mother's arms, and now, all the short-lived embraces, the kisses on her cheek, and the soft lullabies returned until she could neither smile nor cry. But the warmth in her chest knew no equal.

"What's gotten into you all of a sudden?" Diane asked and pulled away to examine Ivy's face stained with blood and dirt and tears. "Feeling homesick already?"

Ivy choked, but her voice nevertheless betrayed her. "Yeah, it's been too long."

King killed the levitation magic of his wings as he freed himself from Aura and Helbram, and walked over to where Ivy struggled against the tremor in her legs. The amber of his eyes brimmed with life. The cold of heartbreak held no power there, and it never would.

Without any strength left to pretend only a few days had passed since their parting, Ivy collapsed into his arms. King patted her head as another wave of weak sobs shook her body.

"It's okay, Ivy, everything's going to be alright," he said, and although he would likely never understand what experiences made her this tipsy with relief, she believed in his words.

Ban had been watching the overwhelm of the family reunion with open confusion and his hands buried in his pockets. Ivy and Lance took a second to make eye contact before Lance marched over to his father.

"Hey kid. Tell me you behaved yourself during training in my absence, I don't wanna have people say all my terrible attributes rubbed off on ya."

Lance didn't take to the playful banter. "I've made mistakes. I make them all the time. I've acted stupid, naïve, dishonest, not just towards you, and because of things I did or refused to do, people have been hurt. I want to at least make up for one of my mistakes. Dad, I love you. Don't forget that ever, no matter what I do or where I'll end up going. I'm glad to have you as my dad."

Ban stood rooted to the spot, motionless for a handful of heartbeats, as he stared into the sincere depths of Lance's eyes. His eyes.

"I know that, Lance. I love you too. Even if I suck ass at showing it."

* * *

"It is my unfortunate duty to report that the crown prince is dead. He fell at Avalon, alongside his second-in-command, Sir Nashtar of Stronghold. I failed in my duty to protect him, and you may rest assured that none of you present is as distraught over his passing as I am. I am furthermore well aware of the danger this poses to Camelot, especially so shortly after the death of the king. With the permission of King Gilthunder, I will leave Liones as soon as the situation allows it in order to retrieve his body. That is all I can say for the moment. I will offer a more detailed report upon my return."

As Errin finished, the grim faces of Camelot's council disintegrated and left her alone at the large table of Liones' war chamber. Jennine, who had arranged the meeting with the help of her magical ability, «Transmission Thread», bowed her head and straightened to take her leave. Even though Jennine was older and their royal statuses had equaled another a day ago, she met Errin with an uncomfortable amount of respect.

Errin had never been meant for the throne, had never prepared for such a title, but the burden had found its way to her regardless. All because she had killed the true heir of Camelot. Whenever she was alone, his face emerged before her inner eye. Sometimes he appeared as a bloodstained murderer. Other times he was nothing but a young boy with a sad smile who helped his little sister back to her feet.

Errin swallowed. Her thoughts and regrets lacked the power to bring back what she had lost, and she had more urgent matters to focus her attention on. All she needed was a little rest. A little optimism if she could find it. The ornate carvings covering the wooden walls with grapevines and passion flowers brought her little comfort. Neither did the massive painting of a stormy sea which dominated the western side of the room.

When the double door opened, Errin thought Jennine had returned to reclaim something she had left behind. But to her surprise, Lance entered the wide chamber. With such perfect timing, he had to have waited outside for the moment Errin would end her talk with the council. After he had run around in his torn and bloody green tunic for so many days, she was shocked by how well the deep blue of Liones suited him. His messy hair only added to the effect.

"How did it go?" he asked with a lighthearted tone that invited a conversation equally lighthearted.

Errin rose from her chair and avoided his gaze by walking over to the set of floor-level windows and the balcony beyond.

"Whatever I say, they won't believe me. Fratricide is a sin even a group as rotten as the council will condemn. They might not hang me right away, but they will make sure to place someone on the throne who is easier to control. And once that happens, Camelot will be an easy prey for Orkney and the other southern kingdoms who have been waiting for their moment to strike. The Round Table will either fall under suspicion of treason for killing the crown prince or for corrupting him. And once they are out of the picture, the rest of Camelot's defenses will crumble. Everything King Arthur built will go to waste."

Lance followed Errin in silence, as she stepped out on the balcony and leant against the balustrade to watch the city of Liones teeming with life and anticipation for the evening event. But when he spoke, his voice was filled with a conviction Errin had deemed lost forever.

"How about you tell them the truth? That Mordred became corrupted not by his men but by an ancient magical power he couldn't control. He died in the confusion of battle. With his death, the dark influence holding the knights of the Round Table fell apart. No one has to know what Mordred intended to do."

Errin studied Lance's profile as he took his place next to her and rested his arms on the marble railing. _No one has to know_…

"The battle won't be easy despite that," she said. "The riots in Camelot's border territories will continue as long as power lies in the hands of those few with magical powers, and the council will continue to gather every straw of influence they can get their hands on. They won't give the throne of Camelot to someone with so little experience."

Lance returned her gaze. "Maybe not now. But you won't have to fight this battle on your own. I got your back. And since I'm responsible for the open spot among your Round Table knights, the least I can do is offer my limited services as payback."

"I would never ask you to do something like that!"

"I know. That's not why I'm doing it. But I have the feeling you will need all the help you can get. You can do me a favor and just accept the offer." A warmth filled his eyes that was impossible to doubt.

In the garden below the balcony, Aura and Helbram played war with Percival, and their laughs and squeals rung from the walls as the two children drove Percival into a corner. With an excess of dramatization, he surrendered. Ivy sat under a tree and watched the spectacle. Her left arm twitched, but she never made a move to join them.

"Will it be better some day?" Errin asked, almost to herself.

Lance heard her regardless. "Merlin said it will take time. The wound might never heal. And even if it does, Ivy will never retrieve her skill in physical combat. As for everything else, I have hope. It helps to know that you will lead Camelot."

A smile illuminated the ghost of torment on his face. He clung onto his optimism, Errin clung onto his optimism, and when Lance offered her a hand to go downstairs, she accepted.

* * *

Gaius closed the volume fittingly titled _How the Mortal Claimed the Divinity of the Goddesses _and stood up to place it back into its usual space on the second highest shelve. Dust flaked down as he rubbed over the neighboring compendiums. All of them detailed the enamoring of the human clan with the purity of the Goddesses and the foundation of the Druid Clan which resulted from their admiration.

He had spent his unoccupied moments in Liones' royal library in search for the missing link between the odd memories in his head and the pendant to which his life was tied, and since there only existed records on two methods of permanent resurrection – one of them had required the Fountain of Youth as the key essence –, he had drawn the connection to the Druid Clan's unique abilities without trouble.

How Merlin had managed to not only tap into this field of expertise but alter the function of «Enslavement of the Dead» he could only speculate. And while the details filled his waking moments with dread, he was determined to ask. Whatever had caused Merlin to prolong Gaius' life beyond its limitations, her reasons would not change his relation with his mentor. She would forever remain the single most brilliant mind he had been granted the opportunity to come across.

He wasn't surprised that the sound of a wooden door squealing in its angles belonged to her arrival.

"Have they made any new additions to the catalogue?" Merlin asked once Gaius had stepped past the bookshelf separating them. "Gilthunder and Margaret have such a poor collection of works – they shouldn't be surprised that I prefer working in Camelot."

"Apart from the higher emphasis on local folktale and the worship of the Goddesses, I'm afraid the knowledge stored in Camelot's library vastly outclasses this one. I assume many of the older records were destroyed during the New Holy War."

"A reasonable hypothesis."

They fell silent, and Gaius used the lull to examine the room with its sparse bookshelves running in parallel lines to the walls. Someone lacking higher education might find the library pleasant to look at with its warm wood colors and with the light filtering through the narrow, triangular-topped windows, whereas those with a basic interest in collected knowledge and history might awe.

Gaius felt neither. But he could at least imagine to experience the latter set of emotions.

"I know you and the others went back in time, and before you ask, I hold no desire to discover what has let you to make such a reckless decision," Merlin said. She cast aside her lecturing voice in favor of a softer tone. "But I'm curious as to how you managed to bend time in such an extreme fashion. As powerful as Katrina's magic is, time lies beyond its limitations."

Gaius rummaged in the depths of his coat pockets until his fingertips found sharp edges. Without hesitance, he presented Merlin the Time Crystal. Katrina had handed him the item with the confirmation that she had no more need for its magic, after she had visited Liones' graveyard to place a white feather at the foot of one of the tombs. Gaius had held on to the crystal since then with the intention to return the item to Merlin at the right opportunity.

"Katrina used the strengthening effect of the Time Crystal to increase her powers," Gaius explained. "But the rest is her accomplishment. Now that we have succeeded in what we set out to do, you should have it back. I apologize for taking it in the first place and disregarding your warning."

Merlin looked at the item resting peacefully in Gaius' palm before focusing on his face once more. There wasn't scrutiny in her gaze so much as longing. Longing for a long-lost past.

"I shouldn't take it back. The creation of the crystal was a selfish act of mine in the first place, and the same holds true for the times I have made use of its magic. It seems I have to accept that some things are better left unattainable."

"Forgive me my frankness, but this sentiment doesn't fit you in the slightest. You are still the only person I know who is capable of turning people into toads and who can make a tree grow fifty years in less than three seconds – altering time should be a small feat to you."

Merlin's eyes widened and her façade, carefully perfected over centuries, dropped a little. Warmth spread inside Gaius' chest, the warmth he only knew when he was around the two people who meant most to him in this world. The strange yet familiar feeling overflooded his body until the might broke through the dam, and he smiled at his mentor. At first, he did not quite know how to handle the upward pull of his lips, and his smile hesitated in the shaky form he had displayed before. But the warmth continued to swell and Merlin's eyes continued to bristle with gratefulness and before long, Gaius was beaming at her, fully and wholly.

Merlin smiled as she placed a shaking hand on his shoulder. "I don't need the Time Crystal anymore."

They remained this way for a moment longer than necessary, in ignorance of the shadow patterns edging their way forward over the wooden flooring, and the dust particles swimming through the streams of light.

Merlin found her voice before Gaius did. "While you were gone, I managed to acquire the rare set of experiment notes I have been searching for ages. The peddler had no idea what he was offering and sold me the entire set for two coins. What do you say, care to recreate the undoubtedly hazardous experiments that led to the disappearance of the Great Wizard Pellinore?"

"I would love to," Gaius said. "But I'm afraid I have other things to attend to."

As if on command, the oak doors behind Merlin swung open, and Katrina tip-toed into the library. She soon overcame her initial surprise over Merlin's presence and showed past her in the limited space of the aisle to meet Gaius' glance.

"Are you ready?" she asked. "They're starting the first act in a couple minutes, and Lance said the first show is always the best because they want to amaze people right away. The others are already waiting for us down in the market alley."

"In that case, teleporting there seems like a reasonable approach," Gaius said and dropped the Time Crystal into his pocket. Its dark entity felt less disturbing than before. "I have yet to see how Liones celebrates in remembrance of the end of the Holy War, but I doubt the evening will hold a candle to the grandeur of Camelot's festivities."

Katrina smirked. "You just have to wait and see."

She intertwined her fingers with his and waited for him to recite the words proceeding his teleportation spells. But even though the words glowed with undeniable clarity in his head, Gaius hesitated to carry out the incantation and turned his attention towards his mentor. She had watched their exchange in respectful silence but with soft adoration shining in her eyes. Words were oftentimes tossed around too easily. But he wanted these words to be said aloud at least once.

"Thank you, Merlin," Gaius said and put all the sincerity he had into these three words.

"What for?"

"For a great many things."

He let the magic flow through his veins to breathe life into the spell that had been resting on his tongue, and Merlin's blissful expression faded to make room for the brightness accompanying a transition of space. Gaius was still smiling as he and Katrina joined Lance, Ivy, and Errin to watch the first bursts of rainbow-colored lights fountain high into the evening sky above the city. The fireworks continued well past midnight, and not once did Gaius hear the voices of Belialuin.

* * *

**(A/N) **Here it is, the last major chapter. This should tie up all lose ends while leaving you with enough ambiguity as to where the characters will go next. I still have a short epilogue to share, and if everything works out, I will post that one the day after tomorrow. As always, thank you for reading and please let me know what you think.


	25. Epilogue

Summer had lost its firm grip on the world to make room for the change of colder seasons. Wherever the eyes travelled, trees and saplings and shrubs presented themselves in the colorful dresses of fall, a formal dance with guests wrapped in auburn, umber, and burnt orange. The air did not yet sting with cold when winds brushed over exposed skin, but this close to the river Tribuit, the breeze carried the salt-lashed chill of the sea.

Ivy took in a lungful of air and relished its pure taste, free of the brimming overwhelm of summer's herbs and flowerbeds. Her feet moved in accordance to the flow of the earth below, the only music to which she would dare to dance. From time to time, she skipped a beat, reminiscent of the joyful prancing of a child.

Too many hopeful images blossomed in her mind to not give into their pull.

She looked beside her, to where Lance maneuvered his horse over the treacherous terrain of worn-out cobblestone. His eyes followed his thoughts to faraway places, maybe to a chain of lakes covered by mist. Or maybe to the vast plain with late-blooming sunflowers outside the Fairy King's Forest.

"What's with the gloomy face?" Ivy asked and came closer so that her Giant shadow engulfed Lance. His mount shied, but he kept the horse under control with a soft pull of the reins and by shifting his weight in the saddle. He was getting the hang of riding with concerning speed. Next he might _enjoy_ this inferior mode of travel.

"I was just thinking that the members of the Round Table won't be too fond of the one who snuffed out their second in command," Lance said with a poor imitation of his joviality. "You know, those who haven't already taken to their heels or those who will be charged for attempted child murder."

"It's my fault. If I hadn't been so unobservant, or if I had managed to escape Nashtar myself, you wouldn't have been forced to kill him."

She had hoped to never again see the look of regret distorting Lance's face as phantoms haunted his mind, but she had failed in her role as the older cousin. Certainly not for the first time but one time too often.

The smile he displayed was built on compassion rather than pain. "I would always make the same choice, so stop making it sound like you owe me anything. At this point we've saved and failed each other so many times that I lost count. How's the hand?"

Ivy twitched the muscles in her left arm, but only her thumb reacted and flexed inwards. The other four fingers remained numb and unresponsive. "I can still hold a quill, but my handwriting sucks now. You better get used to the fact that I'll have to punch you with my right from here on out."

Lance made a face that turned into a lopsided grin when Ivy's expression infected him. No matter what worries fate might throw at them, they would manage.

"You better do that, otherwise I'm gonna go insane surrounded by all these high-class noblemen," Lance said. "The idea of a Round Table isn't so bad, I give Mordred that. Knights from all across Britannia who work towards the same goal should help with building a little unity. It's just a shame that half of its members were psychopaths. Judging all of them on a case by case basis will take forever, and Errin needs all the help she can get."

"And you were chivalrous enough to step up to the challenge."

"Hey, someone has to play representative for Liones, and Howzer was probably beyond ecstatic to get me out of his face for a while."

They slowed their pace at the same time and stopped where the road bent to hurry south through the countryside of southern Liones and the hills of Camelot that lay beyond. A gust of wind tore at their clothes, and Ivy shifted with its stream to turn her eyes to the east. Somewhere beyond the fields of common wheat and barley, Megadoza withered away. Without the constant presence of a leader, the Giant Clan lived in disagreement over how to continue their existence as a race that had known nothing but combat, pushing and pulling and tearing at each other's throats.

"You don't have to go, you know?" Lance's eyes met Ivy's. "No one is forcing you to put up with a bunch of stubborn, warmongering fools and fix their mistakes for them because they couldn't be bothered to do so in millennia. The Colossai don't exist anymore, so you could just forget what they are and how they ended up the way they did."

She was aware of that. No one would think less of her if she left these people to themselves and continued her life in ignorance of their deeds. They weren't her responsibility. But she wanted to no longer shy from those difficult roads full of stones.

"Mordred was right with one thing, you know? If we only take the path of least resistance, we will never be able to better ourselves. Besides, you gave me your okay to this mission, remember? We traveled through time, prevented the annihilation of a human kingdom, and saved those we love from death – punching some sense into geezers, and be they forty feet tall, is child's play by comparison."

Lance grinned. "You're right. Taking up the mantle of a Holy Knight with only Errin to keep my sanity company doesn't sound too bad now."

"Sir Lancelot of the Round Table – I'll never call you that!"

"That's fair as long as I don't have to call you Lady Ivy of the Giant Clan."

They waved each other goodbye as they went their separate ways, a grin plastered on both their faces. Ivy fastened her pace, her heartbeat strong and steady in her chest. Each breath filled her lungs with energy, and the worries she had stomached condensed in the warmth of the golden day of fall. The ecstasy of adventure accompanied her with every step she took, and the ground rocked whenever her feet touched down on the earth.

Earth that was humming with faint magic.

* * *

**(A/N) - October 1, 2020** I owe a lot to this story. When I wrote the first words on April 2, 2019, I had contemplated about the characters and the central conflict for months, and I was convinced that I would finish this piece with roughly 50k words. Needless to say, I missed the mark on that prediction. For the next seven months, I worked on the first draft, and writing became a part of my daily routine. Sometimes I miss the ease with which I churned out 1k words per day back then. I educated myself on all sorts of advice regarding prose, characters, pacing, suspense, and without this long fic, I would not have improved my style to the level it is now. If I compare the final chapters of _Conquest _to the first fic I wrote for this fandom, the change is striking.

This story is also responsible for my passion for Arthurian legends. What had started as an excursion to my university's library in search for names I could give to the Knights of the Round Table grew into a journey through the various poems and romances with Arthurian context that is still ongoing. Thomas Malory's _Le Morte d'Arthur _became one of my favorite books. And thanks to _Conquest_, I learned more about medieval architecture, sword fighting, gem stones, diseases, and even the plants found in Great Britain than I can remember.

Eleven months ago, on November 1, 2019, I posted the Prologue, and since then, not a single week has gone by where I haven't edited this story in some capacity. The characters have become unbelievably dear to me, and I had so much fun developing their personalities and struggles. While I do have enough ideas for the sequel, I doubt I will be writing it anytime soon. I'm content with ending this story here and enjoying further ideas only in my head.

As for words of gratitude, I first have to mention Kamije Celeek without whom this story would not exist. And although she will (likely) never read this, I thank Mars for being the kindest source of inspiration you can imagine. Lastly, a thank you goes out to everyone who read and enjoyed _Conquest of the Past_. If you are feeling generous, please leave a comment and tell me what you liked or didn't like, which parts you enjoyed the most and which you had trouble to get through, or what convinced you to click on this story in the first place. Or share any other thoughts you might have - I'd love to hear from you.

Now that this is over and done with, I can go back to working on _Lancelot of the Lake _\- that thing is shaping up to become absolute Chaos. So long!


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